Elizabeth Huey

Elizabeth Huey's paintings examine human connection and healing. Central to Huey’s practice is an obsession with ecstatic passion and delirium and our society’s extraordinary attempts to create or cure these conditions. Her figures are often immersed in scenes of rehabilitation and recreation. Luminous pairs exchange intimate caresses; a meditation group circles up to stretch. Born from a substratum of wild, expressive paint, the architectural and figural elements of her work hail from a multiplicity of styles and eras. Huey draws imagery from her own photographs as well as an ever expanding collection of magazine cutouts, film clips, literary fragments, news clippings, and found photos. One gets the sense that myriad forces - from nature and architecture, to religion and pop culture - are at work in the minds of each protagonist. The surprising spatial arrangements and disjunctive scale shifts in Huey’s work support a hypnagogic sense of seeing things from the inside out. By bringing together these disparate players in the worlds of her paintings, she creates dynamics, both visual and psychological, that are altogether new.

Born in Virginia, Huey recently moved to Los Angeles after 15 years in New York City. Before earning an MFA from Yale University in 2002, Huey obtained a BA in Psychology from Mount Vernon College (now George Washington University).  She also studied painting at both the Marchutz School in Aix-en-Provence, France and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture in Manhattan. She was awarded the Terra Foundation of American Art Fellowship and Residency (2001) in Giverny, France, the Johns Hopkins University Artist Travel Fellowship (2006) to Bologna, Italy and the Artist Research Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution (2008).  Most recently, she completed the Alma B.C. Schapiro Artist Residency at Yaddo (2014) in Saratoga Springs, NY.

For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art