By Elizabeth Gourlay
Located in Kent, CT
Clean and precise, carefully ordered stripes and blocks of color in orange, green, pale lemon yellow, gray, blue and brown are lively and vibrant against the soft beige background. Signed, dated and titled on verso.
Elizabeth Gourlay’s work is a meditation on color and form, a gradual yet progressive analysis leading to a complex vocabulary of shapes, color and line. Musical composition, emotional states and our collective subconscious resonate within bars, lines and blocks of color. The abstract forms emerge, layer and shift in precisely ordered, carefully composed rhythms. Gourlay's artwork is a contemplation of the elements that make color in reduced forms come to life: size, flatness, relation to its edges, and how the presence of other colors affect how it is perceived.
Gourlay drew inspiration from shapes found in everyday life and in her studio. The observed shapes either remain as they are or become simplified to their essential geometric elements. Subtleties in color, area, edge or orientation are the catalyst for emotive responses. Palette is minimized; the artist rarely used a wide palette within one work. Rather, a broad range of colors are explored and then reduced. Gourlay investigates color properties: complementary or analogous color, value, saturation and color harmony vs. color anomaly.
Elizabeth’s Gourlay’s work has been shown extensively throughout the United States. The artist was the recipient of numerous residencies, fellowships and awards including Artist in Residence at the studio of Sol LeWitt in Spoleto, Italy. Gourlay’s work has been written about in The New Criterion, Painters’ Table and Gorky’s Granddaughter, to name a few. Gourlay earned her MFA at Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT, and her BA from Edinburgh...
Category
2010s Contemporary Elizabeth Gourlay
MaterialsCanvas, Acrylic, Color Pencil
