ARTIST STATEMENT/Elizabeth Garát

From a young age I felt what I now know to be the mystical presence in Nature. Growing up in California and Colorado, I spent a lot of time outdoors in sublimely beautiful places. This early immersion in nature and my sense of the spiritual in it is what led me to paint landscapes as an adult.
My formative years were spent in a sunny, yellow house on my French-Basque/American grandfather’s sheep ranch in rural southern California. Weekends were often spent with my grandmother at her home in Laguna Beach. My grandmother routinely took me on pilgrimages to the local art galleries. The California Impressionists’ land and seascape paintings she introduced me to made an indelible impression. My life out of doors and these encounters with art honed my ability to feel, observe and distill.
In my art life, I am interested in the visual story of places. My representational work- landscape and architecture, explores the mood, essence, and presence of place. I make summer expeditions and work on site as much as possible completing small quick paintings or sketches. At home in the studio, I work at a slower pace referring to my sketches, photos and notes. Given more time, I like to layer my pigments in a way that makes a painting appear illuminated from within.
I feel my most successful paintings function as landscape icons.


Please note All images are original works copyright of Elizabeth J. Garat, and are protected under International Copyright laws. They are for online viewing purposes only and may not be copied, saved to a computer hard drive, reproduced or distributed without the express permission of the artist.