Bruce Cascia

Route 66

2016

Signed lower left Elizabeth Higgins (Canadian, b. 1960) Elizabeth Higgins describes herself as an abstract figurative and landscape painter. Everything around her serves as a potential subject, an inspiration to begin a painting. Fidelity to the landscape, the figure, or the still life is relative, as she isn’t interested in literal depictions; instead, it’s the abstract relationships of these shapes and colors, the abstract pictorial design that drives her work. Higgins’ paintings are rooted in the tradition stemming from Courbet, Derain, Bonnard, Matisse, Morandi, German Expressionism, and the Canadian Group of Seven (also known as the Algonquin School of landscape painters, 1920–1933). She is influenced by the work of her artist-teachers Paul Resika—himself a student of Hans Hofmann—and Robert De Niro, Sr. (1922-1993), as well as the paintings of contemporary artist Peter Doig. Her artistic evolution stretches across this continuum. It is the “in-between”, the hovering between representation and abstraction, that interests her, not the labeling effect of details; instead, she aims directly at the spirit of the painting—of making something come to life. John Goodrich wrote in her catalog essay, “Elizabeth Higgins’ direct brushwork and simplified forms suggest an energy, but crucially, reveal a painter who knows the power of color…” Elizabeth Higgins was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1960. As a Helena...

A bright and inviting interior scene with colorful patterned china plates leaning beside a floral arrangement with green flowers in a vase on a kitchen counter and a crimson red teap...