Elizabeth Michelman

Working across disciplines is natural to me and places me in space and time. While writing an essay, I may also start working with words in a drawing. Words that leap to mind may lead me to write a poem. The next day I may dispense with words entirely to develop color combinations across a surface. I trust my intuitive sense of the needs of the project to tell me how to work—later I decide (or accept) how it all fits together.

The past year has involved working as an art-critic and independent curator, as well as a winter stint at ChaNorth, a small artist residency in the Hudson Valley. My essay on that experience appeared in Artscope Magazine in May, 2024. The exhibition I’ve put together of smaller abstract oil paintings by Boston painter Jo Ann Rothschild, called “Warm to the Touch,” is on view at Storefront Art Projects in Watertown, MA through November 23.

In my ongoing “Color Theory Series,” I continue to create collage-paintings constructed of adhesive sign-vinyl on aluminum panels. It’s like painting but selecting the shapes and colors of strokes without a brush. I also make conventional mixed-media drawings and paintings on paper with Sumi and acrylic inks, paints, markers, and other materials. I study, borrow and learn from other artists’ color and compositional strategies. Recently I’ve been inspired by the color, structural ideas, and boundaries of painters Howard Hodgkin and Stuart Davis. I’m always searching for the next connected idea.