Excerpt from Bader Fund application Essay
Apart from my family, my artwork is the central focus of my life. I am either painting, thinking about painting, or teaching how to paint. My inspiration is now internal; my visual curiosity for my immediate surroundings is all I need. I have structured my life around painting, so do not require travel or an art residency - my life is a residency. Recently, an artist friend stayed with our family (all of whom paint) for five days as a sort of residency. He made 15 small paintings in that time and said it was so stimulating that he wanted to make it an annual event.
Still life and landscape are my primary subjects. My studio currently has 3 set ups in it. I intend to work from them as long as possible, making a series of paintings exploring my response to the set ups over time. After studying a subject long enough, I internalize the shapes and colors, see the set up as one unit, and am left with the rhythms within the whole structure and a fugue of echoing forms and hues. Often, for example, a variety of greens will reverberate throughout a painting as do the ellipses of bowls, plates and their shadows.
I use a lot of materials, especially paint and brushes. Except for my small preparatory paintings, my work tend to be 3-5 feet per side. My practice is to draw first, followed by smaller tonal and color painting studies often on paper, and finally a long reworking of a larger piece. Painting for me is intuitive and immediate - I regularly scrape or sand off the previous day’s work to re-attack an image as a whole instead of slowly adding detail. Once I have an understanding of the set-up, the painting itself leads me. This means I adjust or distort colors and shapes I am actually seeing for the sake of the final painting. Experimenting is central to my process. I try a variety of compositions and color arrangements before a painting if finished. There are many paintings under each final image.
Artist Statement
Elizabeth Geiger’s colorful and bold paintings are made after much observation and careful
study. She draws and paints extensively at a location to become familiar with the sense of place or arrangement, visiting outdoor views at different times of day and in different weather conditions and considering her indoor arrangements in varied lighting situations. This allows her to bring confidence and playfulness to larger work.
Ms. Geiger’s paintings are informed by art history, intuition and a desire to create visual drama. These forces can create tension between the innocent beauty of nature and the more tumultuous, internal world of emotion.
