Inside the Studio

In Living Color Showdown Finalist, Elizabeth Williams

Favorite material to work with?
Acrylic paint.

What themes do you pursue?
Spontaneity, serendipity, ambiguity, layers, process, human nature.

Where is your studio?
In my apartment in Washington, D.C.

What was the best advice given to you as an artist?
I recall a few good pieces of advice…. “Be true to yourself – don’t get caught up with what others are doing.” “Work hard – treat making art as your day job.”

But the best might be this from Letters to a Young Poet:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Art school or self-taught?
Both. I hold a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Prefer to work with music or in silence?
Usually with music but there are times I prefer silence.

Where can we find you outside of the studio?
On the dance floor.

What’s around the corner from your place?
Row houses. Restaurants, stores, and the zoo are close by.

Day job?
Besides painting I also do color/design consulting and interior paint finishes (walls, furniture).

Favorite contemporary artist?
Cy Twombly.

If you could only have one piece of art in your life, what would it be?
Cy Twombly, “III Notes from Salalah, (Note II)”.

Who are your favorite writers?
Rainer Maria Rilke, Octovio Paz, Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, JD Salinger, Haruki Murakami, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Agnes Martin.

Favorite brushes?
Big, wide, flat.

Is painting dead?
No.

Palette knifes?
Yes.

Monet or Manet?
Both.

Koons or Hirst?
Neither.