Today we’d like to introduce you to Liz Dexheimer.
Liz, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t drawing, painting, and later, printmaking … although it took me a while to get to a place where I was able to commit full time to a studio practice. My first art class was finger-painting at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC when I was almost three. I don’t remember it at all, I mention it because I still have a couple of the pieces that my mother had saved for me. I like looking at them occasionally. They remind me that, knowingly or not, I’ve always been exploring the same ideas of color, space and gesture.
While an undergrad at Oberlin College, I studied East Asian art/literature and history in addition to Western Art History and studio arts. This course of study continues to influence and inform my work today. After graduation, I moved back to NYC and (reluctantly) spent five years in the corporate world while continuing coursework at Parsons School of Design and School of Visual Arts, free-lancing in graphic design and illustration and also working toward certification as an art teacher. I realized that none of those really spoke to me, all I had ever really wanted to do was be a full-time working artist, painting, printing. In my 30’s I was able to commit to that, moving to a small town in rural Connecticut, creating a network of resources and establishing very rewarding relationships with other artists.
Today, my work is shown in a number of galleries, I’ve participated in numerous curated shows and solos shows, and I am fortunate to be in several corporate collections, including the Corporate Headquarters for Frontier Communications, Hudson Insurance, JW Marriott, and United People’s Bank, among others. I maintain a painting studio in my home town, and work with master printers in Santa Fe, NM, Brooklyn, NY, and Norwalk, CT to create large scale monotypes.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I am an oil painter and a printmaker and take great joy in exploring what each process has to offer. My wish is to create something that speaks to the unique processes and properties inherent to each medium, pushing each as far as I can. I’ve stopped trying to reconcile the differences in the imagery I create with each, realizing that they are both part of the whole of what I wish to express visually. My visual cues come from everything I see, everywhere… but what I respond to, and want to convey, is a sense of atmosphere, mystery, place, of the interplay between the ephemeral and the enduring, the co-existence of limitlessness and completeness in any one moment.
The conversation that occurs as colors react and interact with each other, each adding its own energy and dynamic, is fundamental to my approach in both my paintings and my works on paper. I like to work in series. I find that pieces react off each other, spark dialogue, build on each other. The imagery changes, evolves, but it almost always comes down to aspects of Nature, without any references to man-made markers. Currently, I’m working on two series of paintings… the “east coast” Seasonal Curtain and Green Suite pieces, inspired by what I see every day, and a new suite of work, still in process, directly inspired by the intensely dynamic and gestural quality of the lines in the rocks in Joshua Tree, CA, after re-visiting the park earlier this year.
In my monotypes and panels (which are sort of a hybrid of painting and printmaking), I alternate between exploring the intricate and elaborate combinations of line and reflective elements found in koi ponds and other water environments and working with forms and patterns that take on a more figurative quality and energy. My earliest memories relating to art are all about staring in wonderment at how color, shape, and form interact to suggest or define objects, space, everything. I still stare; the wonderment has never left me. It is my hope that viewers will react that way as well, and want to look further, to discover something new each time and to never tire of looking.
How do you think about success, as an artist, and what do quality do you feel is most helpful?
I view my work as what I hope is the beginning of a dialogue/conversation: to have others wish to continue that conversation by looking at it, thinking about it, engaging with it, is my definition of success as an artist. I think it’s essential to have the confidence to remain true to one’s unique voice and to develop the visual vocabulary to express it, in whatever combination of thought, practice, observation and technique that development entails. And to have the determination and desire to always make the best work possible. As a working artist, of course, sales are appreciated. But for me they can never drive the work…
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I am affiliated with several galleries in the east: Amy Simon Fine Art, Argazzi Art., and Katherine Markel Fine Arts. And, happily, as I write, I have been approached by a couple of others, so stay tuned…. sadly, one of my galleries, the highly-regarded Behnke-Doherty Gallery on Martha’s Vineyard, with which I enjoyed a long and successful relationship, closed last summer; the principals are pursuing other ventures at the moment.
My website is: lizdexheimer.com, and my email is lizdexheimer@me.com. My Instagram is: lizdexheimer; although I’m not great at posting, I always appreciate comments. Anyway, that people want to reach out, I always love hearing from those who have seen my work.
Contact Info:
- Website: lizdexheimer.com
- Email: lizdexheimer@me.com
- Instagram: @lizdexheimer
Image Credit:
Liz Dexheimer
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