September 10, 2025 • 29 mins
In this episode of Unapologetically Creative, host Andrew Ramsammy sits down with painter Elizabeth Tremante, whose powerful and often humorous “paintings within paintings” challenge traditional museum narratives. From a rural childhood in upstate New York to graduate school at Stanford, Elizabeth shares how motherhood, feminism and a deep curiosity for art history shape her vivid imagined museum scenes—spaces filled with children, pregnant bodies and overlooked figures rarely represented in classical art. Together, they explore how art can be both comic and critical, tender and disruptive, asking us to see the gallery and the stories within it through new eyes.
TIMESTAMPS:
2:06 – 3:22 | Early Life & Path to Art
3:25 – 4:18 | The Spark of Creation
5:08 – 6:31 | Describing Her Work
7:09 – 8:15 | A Daughter’s Reaction to Museums
8:53 – 9:44 | On Feminism and Representation
10:56 – 14:46 | Reframing Art History in Her Paintings
15:15 – 18:14 | Humor, Mythology, and Reinterpretation
18:41 – 19:58 | Reception and Criticism
20:09 – 21:17 | Art History as Power and Violence
21:27 – 23:31 | Making Blood Visible
24:17 – 27:31 | Themes of Care and Vulnerability
28:22 – 28:55 | Unapologetically Creative
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Yeah. So my intention is really to
create images that allow people to think about issues maybe a
little bit differently, even if they aren't necessarily on board
with like my kind of strict viewof the world.
(00:25):
Welcome to Unapologetically Creative, a podcast from the
Vermont College of Fine Arts, where we celebrate bold
artistry, transformative creativity, and the audacious
voices shaping the future of thearts.
I'm your host, Andrew Ram Sammy,and in this series, we dive into
honest, inspiring conversations with artists who are pushing
(00:48):
boundaries and redefining what it means to create work that
resonates. And indoors, Elizabeth Tremonti,
a painter whose vivid and layered works challenge the
boundaries of our history and the museum space itself.
Elizabeth takes us on a journey through her rural upbringing and
(01:09):
the deeply personal spark that led her to create paintings
within paintings. These imagined museum scenes are
filled with people who are oftenmissing from traditional art.
With humor and clarity, she reflects on how motherhood and
feminism have shaped her perspective.
Her work invites us to question the past and rethink what
(01:33):
belongs in the frame. Elizabeth, welcome to an
apologetically creative. Thank you.
What a lovely introduction. Oh.
That's you. Did you recognize that?
Did you know that? Was you?
I'm going to seat that in my mind very deeply so I know that
that's me now and in the future.All right.
So in that place, can you share with us what's.
(01:55):
Been your creative journey how did you come to this and we'll
talk later more about your art and your art within art and this
approach that you've. Taken, but what's been?
Your artistic journey. Well, I was always an artist,
like many people, but I grew up on a farm in upstate New York,
and we did not, you know, we didn't go to museums.
(02:16):
We didn't really kind of interface with an art world at
all. But my parents always encouraged
us to do whatever it was we wanted to do.
So I did a lot of drawing. But, you know, by the time I got
to college, I still really didn't have a sense that that
was a thing that you could do orthat would happen.
(02:37):
But I took some art classes in college and I round up an
English major, but I was still like very curious.
And after traveling, backpackinga bit through my 20s and
starting to just make work on myown, I wound up applying for
Graduate School when I was about30, so a little bit later than
(02:59):
some. And I went to Stanford
University, which has a very interesting graduate program for
visual arts. And it was just a wonderful
experience for me academically, intellectually, socially,
everything. And I really felt like I
connected with my art as self ina in a really powerful way.
(03:21):
So what thrusted you into that creative journey?
What? What was the spark?
Oh, I think just my desire really.
I mean, I like I said, I always drew.
I mean, I have this memory, verydistinct memory.
When I was little, we were building a barn and my dad was
pouring some concrete and I justgot this, you know, off cut of
(03:44):
plywood. And I put this BLOB of concrete
and found some feathers and likestuck them in it.
And I still remember the feeling.
It was like, I was so excited about this weird thing that I'd
made. And then my dad looked at it and
he was like, oh, that's beautiful.
What a what a magical thing. And, you know, I dried and it
(04:06):
cracked and fell apart. But it really was a moment for
me where you kind of, you got tofeel that high of like, I just
brought this new thing into the world that didn't exist before.
And it's super weird, but I it'spart of me.
I'm assuming you've had that feeling again and again.
Sure, sure, definitely. I mean not always, but you know,
definitely when I'm kind of in the flow and things are working
(04:29):
and I've actually set my practice up hopefully to have
more experiences like that by really establishing a working
process. So I kind of know the steps I'm
going to go through. So when I get to actually
putting paint on a canvas, I've already made a lot of decisions.
And so I can kind of be open with that and be free with that
(04:53):
and be a little more intuitive for that as opposed to like,
kind of struggling, which I knowsome people love.
But for me, that feels a little bit more like bumps in the road.
Yeah. So describe your work.
If someone were to look at your work, what would they see?
Will they are paintings of museum interiors.
They're all mostly fictitious and I've set them up to be sort
(05:16):
of like theater sets. So they're very graphic.
There's just like openings for doors and windows.
They're very rigid in a sense and they're they're very flat.
So there's like a lower registerthat's a floor, and then upper
registers that have either just one wall or openings in the wall
so you can see back through to successive rooms.
(05:38):
And then there are artworks on the walls that I've painted.
They're my versions of existing artworks, and some hue pretty
closely to the actual artwork, and some do not at all.
And then the spaces are populated with figures, mostly
female, female identifying figures, lots of children and a
(06:03):
lot of people that you don't seein paintings, like, for example,
clothed females, pregnant people, elderly people, ill
people. And a lot of them are, you know,
acting out in different ways. They're children.
So the children might be vomiting.
(06:23):
They might be picking their nose.
They might be like picking it a scab or, you know, the kinds of
things that kids actually do. In museums.
In museums. When I start your.
Work it like. Immediately took me back to
growing up in New York City and going to museums as a kid, and
especially as when I became an actor, having to do scene
(06:45):
studies and character studies. And you just take like that
snapshot everyone, every one of your paintings is like a picture
frozen in time of like what happened?
And you're going, What just happened?
Exactly. And their paintings within
paintings. I mean it's.
This whole like transom, it's like it's a portal into a place
in a space and the time. So where did that come from?
(07:06):
What? What?
What's the origin of that perspective?
So I when my daughter was 7 or 8, I took her to LA County
Museum and I was really excited to show her works in the
permanent collection that I love.
And so we were looking at some different paintings and she
(07:28):
found them very upsetting and disturbing.
And so they were like, you know,cubist paintings of women maybe.
I think they have like Picasso and Brock there and also like
Giocometti, the way these kind of figures are extended in the
(07:50):
the kind of tall and walking figure series.
And she just found she took themvery literally.
Like bodies are cut up and reconfigured.
You know, there was a lot of violence, kind of not nudity,
but, you know, kind of sexualization.
And you know, I had my first real bad mom moment where I was
(08:12):
like, Oh my God, what am I doingto my child?
But. Did you expect expect that she
would have? Such a reaction.
No, no, because I've, I had beenlike looking at that work, you
know, historically or formally. I think I've been, I, I don't
really even see it literally. I mean, that's not even like
part of the way that I look at the work.
(08:34):
But then through her, but through her eyes.
But through her literal eyes, you know, it's, it's a, you
know, these are like halls of violence.
And she's not wrong. She's not wrong.
And this is so this is not a newidea.
I mean, I think, you know, feminists have talked about this
for a long time, You know, that we are.
Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Yes, yes I do. I do.
(08:55):
And that shows up in your work. I'm not sure we'll leave that up
to the viewer. Some people say Oh yes, this is
like super feminist work, but I.You wouldn't classify your work
as being a body of. I'm not sure that I'm the person
who would be the right one to classify that.
Yeah. So, yeah.
But we are conditioned to seeing, you know, the female
(09:19):
body in all states of violence undressed.
I mean, there are so many paintings of rape in museums.
There are, you know, many ancient sculptures, headless,
armless, like things like this that again, you know, you get
really excited to see, like the Winged Victory in the Louvre,
(09:41):
except, you know, there's no head, so.
Is that because, and I'm not trying to put words in your
mouth, is it because art is typical through the male gaze?
Is that? Well, I think originally for the
sculptures, they're just broken.And I'm not sure why there are
more broken female sculptures than male.
It might just be like the necks and the arms are narrower.
I mean, it could be just simple,you know, kind of something
(10:04):
mechanical like that. But to your point, an artist
like Rodin, A sculpture like a sculptor like Rodin, I mean, a
lot of his work was indebted to those classical sculptures, but
he thought it was interesting tomake these female figures
without heads and without arms. I when I was in Graduate School
(10:28):
at Stanford, I worked for the Kantor Art Museum, their
conservation department, cleaning the outdoor sculpture
collection and they have a huge Rodin collection.
So I I have spent many hours thinking about this subject,
like scrubbing the backside of the burgers of Calais and
cleaning the gates of hell with a toothbrush.
(10:50):
Literally so. Has that become an actual piece
of work? No, no, no.
But in the moment that I was actually doing that, I was like,
I'm, I'm going to be able to talk about this for the rest of
my life. So, you know, after I thought a
lot about that experience with my daughter, she's not.
(11:12):
But I thought like, OK, maybe I can work with this.
Like, is it possible that I could make paintings in my
artworks that deal with the artworks both literally and
historically, and that the figures and the paintings are
being acted upon by those those imperatives or those impulses,
(11:38):
even if they're totally unconscious.
So that's kind of what you see. So in each of the paintings I've
curated, this really a historical and totally
ridiculous exhibition that may, you know, have a contemporary
painting by Mark Grochon next to, you know, Rembrandt's
(12:00):
Lucretia, where she's kind of stabbing herself after being
raped and her blood is splattering all over the museum.
But it's next to this Grochon painting, which also has this
kind of, it's like deep red withthis kind of expressive mark
making and a kind of strange face embedded in it.
(12:21):
And then in the space, there's ayoung child whose body is kind
of curling in on herself. And then there's a docent who's
clearly, you know, kind of explaining in historical terms
what these mean. So I like the idea of somehow
(12:43):
that the figures in the spaces are being gas lit a little bit
by the museums, like they're seeing something literally.
But then when you read the text panel, it's telling you like a
totally different story. So it's, you know, you're
basically, I mean, this is how this conditioning happens,
right, Right. You read about a master's piece,
but you're looking at it and you're like, but wait, she's
(13:05):
stabbing herself. Like what about that?
Like what about that story? So, so these are the kind of
things that unfold in the paintings.
There's a certain level of slapstick and chaos that I
really embrace and a lot of typeof behaviors that are not
(13:27):
appropriate in a museum. So I was I did a project with a
group of artists. It was part of a series of
Flux's performance projects at amajor museum in Los Angeles, in
the Brentwood neighborhood. And one of the pieces that we
wanted to make was a small sculpture that would go in the
(13:48):
urinal in the men's room. And the lawyers for the
institution rejected the piece because they did not want people
looking at art and looking at their genitals at the same time,
which I get. So, but I, I thought about it
and I've thought, OK, well, whatother things are like
inappropriate to do in front of an artwork?
(14:10):
You know, can you, can you bleedin front of an artwork?
Can you pick your nose? Is it OK to have Bo when you're
in a museum? You know, can you breastfeed
your baby in a museum? So these are these are all the
things that I'm kind of bringingtogether in the paintings.
And I mean in a pretty intuitiveway.
(14:33):
So I don't, you know, I'm not trying to lock down any
particular meaning, but I do have questions and ideas that
I'm thinking through in each of the paintings.
For use it like sampling, like how music samples, you know, and
then you're taking not a sample,but you're actually taking the
artwork and you're putting it init's artwork.
(14:56):
Within art, it's. It's an art piece within art.
Correct. Right.
It's that scene of literally if you were at a museum looking at
and you have to go to Elizabeth site to be able to see this and
understand what we're talking about here.
But so you you already know thatthere will be a piece that's in
there that you're going to use. Correct, correct.
And you know, and I'll think about if I want to change it at
(15:19):
all. So for example, I think Degas is
a good example. There's a a piece at the Getty,
I can't remember the name of it.Let's just say it's the bather.
It's like a it's a figure of a woman.
Whether she's getting into the tub or getting out, it's hard to
say. It's extremely awkward.
It's a very strange artwork. And in the wall text, they do
(15:41):
talk about Daga being kind of misogynistic and that he felt
that women were kind of manipulative.
And so in his work, he tried to paint them in these in between
moments when they were not able to sort of seduce men with their
coquetry, which I always felt about his work.
(16:05):
And I was like, so happy that the Getty actually put that in
the wall text. So for that.
So that was an interesting painting, and I included that in
one of my works, but I changed it a little so that the figure
was even more awkward and lookedlike she was sort of falling out
of the tub. So it felt much more like the
Three Stooges than Dega. And so that's the type of
(16:32):
experience like I might have in person with an artwork.
You know, there's a lot of interesting stories that come
from mythology, like Dan I who she was thrown into prison.
I won't go into why, but but basically she was not supposed
to have a child. And so Zeus, quote UN quote,
(16:56):
fell in love with her, as he didwith many women.
And he came to her in a golden shower.
And this, I know it's so funny. So this is a, this story has
been painted over and over with Dan.
I kind of sitting back like her breasts are open.
She's very young and beautiful and she's looking up and there's
(17:16):
like golden liquid falling down from the sky on her crotch.
And so this story, I think it needs very little assist for me
to be placed in the context of one of my paintings to be like
both weirdly comic but also kindof disturbing.
(17:37):
And, you know, there's a friction there.
And so if in a painting, if I have like 2 young girls kind of
looking quizzically at that image, something happens there.
There's like a friction between the figures in the space and the
painting that allows the viewer to sort of enter the painting.
(18:02):
I mean, I think the humor is hopefully it's disarming and it
kind of allows people to, you know, look at that critically as
well as maybe like, you know, think about the story, right?
So I'm going to assume that somepeople probably think that
you're messing with the masters.You're going in and stirring the
(18:22):
pod, You're agitating, you know,perfection.
How dare you. How have you pushed back against
that? How have you dealt with perhaps
the criticism or the, I would say anti establishment of what
it is that you are establishing?You know it's.
Interesting. I had an e-mail from a woman who
(18:45):
works for Christie's in London just kind of out of the blue.
And she wasn't, she wasn't critical, but she was I, she
was, she was very curious. She's like, what are you doing?
Like, anyway, we had a, we had alittle e-mail exchange about it.
I think that the humor is truly disarming.
(19:08):
And so I for people who find it a little bit upsetting to see
art history kind of manhandled in that way, I don't know what
to say to them other than, you know, this is a perspective.
You know, there are a lot of maybe, you know, you can look at
it from the perspective of the figures that are in the spaces.
(19:30):
They're not represented in art history.
And I'm trying to do that. I'm placing them in paintings
also amid these historical artworks.
And there they are. So now they're here.
And, you know, not to say that necessarily that my work is, you
know, going to be some kind of canonical art history, but even
(19:52):
if it's a tertiary flow of art history, they're there.
Well, it's I mean. It certainly is a commentary on
art history and how art history is taught.
And to your point, what is actually said in that history,
especially when it's not represented in the footnotes.
Yeah, and there's. A The painters I twombly near
(20:14):
the end of his life to this big series of paintings called
Bacchus. There are this yellow feel, this
yellow ground with they're painted with red paint.
Some have flowers, some just have these large sweeping curves
of red paint that kind of drips down.
And if you're familiar with Sai Twombly's work, he was very
(20:34):
interested in art history. So his paintings are abstract.
They used a lot of mixed media. He lived in Rome, so he was sort
of like embedded in in this veryhistorical place.
But I often wondered with those late paintings, those Bacchus
paintings, if he was really thinking about like art history
(20:56):
is a history of violence, which is it is, I mean, it's also a
history of beauty and power. And let's say, let's end it
right there. It's about power.
And it really that inspired me in a way.
I mean, again, this is my own interpretation.
There may be 40 art historians who are like, that's the dumbest
thing I've ever heard, but I don't care.
(21:17):
What happens if someone doesn't know that that's a part of art
history and there is a there's apainting within a painting.
How are they supposed to look atyour work?
That's a great. Question.
I think that they just have to interpret those artworks as if
they went to a museum and saw them on their own.
(21:37):
So hopefully they're looking at them in the very literal way
that my daughter did. And there are there are so many
signifiers though, like the way the figures are dressed or, you
know, if it's a portrait, the way the portrait is composed and
(21:58):
you know, the type of backgroundthat it has.
I mean, a lot of these things were very prescriptive at
different points in art history.And a lot of the artworks,
especially the ones that deal with violence, they do extend
into the spaces. So I am very interested in some
of these paintings that have like women in them and kind of
(22:21):
bloodless violence. So the story of Lucretia, so
she, she's raped and she stabs herself so she does not dishonor
her family. So this is like a teaching
story, right? But a lot, there's zillions of
paintings of Lucretia, and very few of them have blood, even
(22:43):
though she's got like a knife stabbed halfway into her chest.
So, you know, for a lot of those, for example, like, I'll
just like, make the blood spray everywhere in the museum.
So that's like pooling on the floor, spraying out into the in,
you know? And then there's like different
guests at the museum who are kind of standing around, like
(23:04):
looking at these pools of blood on the floor, which is funnier
than it sounds, I hope. It's ridiculous.
Let's let's put it that way. So there are also these ways
that I think even if you don't know Lucretia's story at all,
you can still kind of get that the paintings kind of some weird
(23:29):
type of history. It's interesting.
Right, because people would never say that art.
Incites violence. But yet rap music, music videos,
video games, all those other things get blamed for it.
But get to your point in these artworks where it's a bloodless
thing. No one, no one ever blames art
(23:52):
for doing that. But yet all the modern versions
and durations of it. So now that you've taken those
things that you've kind of, I don't want to say manifested
them, but you've interpreted them as being the thing that
they actually are by actually giving them the color that was
supposed to be there but yet wasomitted or for whatever reason,
the artist decided to do it, do it that way.
(24:13):
What's the commentary that you hope people take away from that?
Well, I think it's. Less about the artworks and more
about the figures in the spaces.You know, I'm I'm very
interested in ideas of care and vulnerabilities.
So these are at odds with prettymuch everything that we've
talked about so far. But I a lot of the children in
(24:39):
the in the museums are being cared for by a parent or a
guardian or a sibling or something.
So they're kind of experiencing something that's sort of a
trauma in the painting. And they may be kind of acting
out in a certain way in the gallery space.
But, but for many of them, thereis also someone who's caring for
(25:02):
them and they're like I mentioned before, you know,
there are a lot of pregnant figures, a lot of nude pregnant
figures, younger, younger girls.You know, I told you I grew up
on a farm and in this kind of rural area, I there were lots of
(25:25):
young, not let's say not lots, but they were often at any given
time, you know, a pregnant teenager at high school or more
than one. And this was not this was not a
surprise. And they are extremely
vulnerable. I was reading an article
recently that said that homicideis the leading cause of death of
(25:51):
pregnant women or new parents you by firearms.
And that rate of homicide is higher for women of color than
it is for white women. And it's I think establishing
that pregnancy is a really vulnerable time and that, you
know, women, women's choice about whether they go through
(26:16):
that experience or not is being removed is important.
So while I am not saying that explicitly in the artwork, I
think it's important by simply placing these figures in the
spaces, it's even if it's in a like a kind of a comic setting,
(26:37):
it's disarming in a way that allows people who may even
disagree with my political beliefs to consider that these
are human beings who have a life, who are, you know, by
choice or by force entering intoa contract with the world that
(27:00):
could end their own life. So I have like a pretty serious
intent with these paintings. And but again, the
representation of these figures,you know, if you think about
like the thousands or even millions of like nude female
figures and paintings, like how many nude pregnant figures are
(27:21):
there in historical artworks? Not very many, like, I don't
know, none, maybe a couple. It's not it's not a thing.
It's not a prominent. Thing, right, Yeah, so.
I don't know, it's interesting, like how glaring like it is.
If you see older women in paintings, you know, they're
usually like the Crone who's like whispering in a young
(27:45):
beautiful woman's ear. Very, you know, there's older
women in portraiture, but also, again, maybe not that many
because they weren't leaders or they weren't rulers.
So, yeah. So my intention is really to
create images that allow people to think about issues maybe a
(28:06):
little bit differently, even if they, you know, aren't
necessarily on board with like my, my kind of strict view of
the world. What is unapologetically
creative mean to you when you hear that in terms of.
Being unapologetic I'm unapologetic about my views of
art history. I'm unapologetic about creating
(28:29):
artworks that ask people to hold, you know, 2 contradictory
ideas in their mind at one time.I'm unapologetic about children,
about vulnerable people. And I, I just, I think it's
important. And these are, you know, these
are the ideas that seem to work really well in my paintings.
(28:56):
Elizabeth's paintings ask us to sit with discomfort, humor,
contradiction, and most importantly, care through
figures she places in her Imagine Museum pieces children,
pregnant people, the elderly, she.
Reclaims. Visibility for those our history
has overlooked or erased. Her work?
(29:18):
Reminds us that even within the quiet reverence of a museum,
there is space for resistance, tenderness, and new stories as
she continues to challenge the Canon unapologetically.
Elizabeth. Invites us to look again and to
really see. Thanks for listening to
Unapologetically Creative. Be sure to follow the show and
(29:41):
stay. Tuned.
For more insightful conversations in the episodes
ahead to learn more about the Vermont College of Fine Arts,
visit vcfa.edu.
Yeah. So my intention is really to
create images that allow people to think about issues maybe a
little bit differently, even if they aren't necessarily on board
with like my kind of strict viewof the world.
(00:25):
Welcome to Unapologetically Creative, a podcast from the
Vermont College of Fine Arts, where we celebrate bold
artistry, transformative creativity, and the audacious
voices shaping the future of thearts.
I'm your host, Andrew Ram Sammy,and in this series, we dive into
honest, inspiring conversations with artists who are pushing
(00:48):
boundaries and redefining what it means to create work that
resonates. And indoors, Elizabeth Tremonti,
a painter whose vivid and layered works challenge the
boundaries of our history and the museum space itself.
Elizabeth takes us on a journey through her rural upbringing and
(01:09):
the deeply personal spark that led her to create paintings
within paintings. These imagined museum scenes are
filled with people who are oftenmissing from traditional art.
With humor and clarity, she reflects on how motherhood and
feminism have shaped her perspective.
Her work invites us to question the past and rethink what
(01:33):
belongs in the frame. Elizabeth, welcome to an
apologetically creative. Thank you.
What a lovely introduction. Oh.
That's you. Did you recognize that?
Did you know that? Was you?
I'm going to seat that in my mind very deeply so I know that
that's me now and in the future.All right.
So in that place, can you share with us what's.
(01:55):
Been your creative journey how did you come to this and we'll
talk later more about your art and your art within art and this
approach that you've. Taken, but what's been?
Your artistic journey. Well, I was always an artist,
like many people, but I grew up on a farm in upstate New York,
and we did not, you know, we didn't go to museums.
(02:16):
We didn't really kind of interface with an art world at
all. But my parents always encouraged
us to do whatever it was we wanted to do.
So I did a lot of drawing. But, you know, by the time I got
to college, I still really didn't have a sense that that
was a thing that you could do orthat would happen.
(02:37):
But I took some art classes in college and I round up an
English major, but I was still like very curious.
And after traveling, backpackinga bit through my 20s and
starting to just make work on myown, I wound up applying for
Graduate School when I was about30, so a little bit later than
(02:59):
some. And I went to Stanford
University, which has a very interesting graduate program for
visual arts. And it was just a wonderful
experience for me academically, intellectually, socially,
everything. And I really felt like I
connected with my art as self ina in a really powerful way.
(03:21):
So what thrusted you into that creative journey?
What? What was the spark?
Oh, I think just my desire really.
I mean, I like I said, I always drew.
I mean, I have this memory, verydistinct memory.
When I was little, we were building a barn and my dad was
pouring some concrete and I justgot this, you know, off cut of
(03:44):
plywood. And I put this BLOB of concrete
and found some feathers and likestuck them in it.
And I still remember the feeling.
It was like, I was so excited about this weird thing that I'd
made. And then my dad looked at it and
he was like, oh, that's beautiful.
What a what a magical thing. And, you know, I dried and it
(04:06):
cracked and fell apart. But it really was a moment for
me where you kind of, you got tofeel that high of like, I just
brought this new thing into the world that didn't exist before.
And it's super weird, but I it'spart of me.
I'm assuming you've had that feeling again and again.
Sure, sure, definitely. I mean not always, but you know,
definitely when I'm kind of in the flow and things are working
(04:29):
and I've actually set my practice up hopefully to have
more experiences like that by really establishing a working
process. So I kind of know the steps I'm
going to go through. So when I get to actually
putting paint on a canvas, I've already made a lot of decisions.
And so I can kind of be open with that and be free with that
(04:53):
and be a little more intuitive for that as opposed to like,
kind of struggling, which I knowsome people love.
But for me, that feels a little bit more like bumps in the road.
Yeah. So describe your work.
If someone were to look at your work, what would they see?
Will they are paintings of museum interiors.
They're all mostly fictitious and I've set them up to be sort
(05:16):
of like theater sets. So they're very graphic.
There's just like openings for doors and windows.
They're very rigid in a sense and they're they're very flat.
So there's like a lower registerthat's a floor, and then upper
registers that have either just one wall or openings in the wall
so you can see back through to successive rooms.
(05:38):
And then there are artworks on the walls that I've painted.
They're my versions of existing artworks, and some hue pretty
closely to the actual artwork, and some do not at all.
And then the spaces are populated with figures, mostly
female, female identifying figures, lots of children and a
(06:03):
lot of people that you don't seein paintings, like, for example,
clothed females, pregnant people, elderly people, ill
people. And a lot of them are, you know,
acting out in different ways. They're children.
So the children might be vomiting.
(06:23):
They might be picking their nose.
They might be like picking it a scab or, you know, the kinds of
things that kids actually do. In museums.
In museums. When I start your.
Work it like. Immediately took me back to
growing up in New York City and going to museums as a kid, and
especially as when I became an actor, having to do scene
(06:45):
studies and character studies. And you just take like that
snapshot everyone, every one of your paintings is like a picture
frozen in time of like what happened?
And you're going, What just happened?
Exactly. And their paintings within
paintings. I mean it's.
This whole like transom, it's like it's a portal into a place
in a space and the time. So where did that come from?
(07:06):
What? What?
What's the origin of that perspective?
So I when my daughter was 7 or 8, I took her to LA County
Museum and I was really excited to show her works in the
permanent collection that I love.
And so we were looking at some different paintings and she
(07:28):
found them very upsetting and disturbing.
And so they were like, you know,cubist paintings of women maybe.
I think they have like Picasso and Brock there and also like
Giocometti, the way these kind of figures are extended in the
(07:50):
the kind of tall and walking figure series.
And she just found she took themvery literally.
Like bodies are cut up and reconfigured.
You know, there was a lot of violence, kind of not nudity,
but, you know, kind of sexualization.
And you know, I had my first real bad mom moment where I was
(08:12):
like, Oh my God, what am I doingto my child?
But. Did you expect expect that she
would have? Such a reaction.
No, no, because I've, I had beenlike looking at that work, you
know, historically or formally. I think I've been, I, I don't
really even see it literally. I mean, that's not even like
part of the way that I look at the work.
(08:34):
But then through her, but through her eyes.
But through her literal eyes, you know, it's, it's a, you
know, these are like halls of violence.
And she's not wrong. She's not wrong.
And this is so this is not a newidea.
I mean, I think, you know, feminists have talked about this
for a long time, You know, that we are.
Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Yes, yes I do. I do.
(08:55):
And that shows up in your work. I'm not sure we'll leave that up
to the viewer. Some people say Oh yes, this is
like super feminist work, but I.You wouldn't classify your work
as being a body of. I'm not sure that I'm the person
who would be the right one to classify that.
Yeah. So, yeah.
But we are conditioned to seeing, you know, the female
(09:19):
body in all states of violence undressed.
I mean, there are so many paintings of rape in museums.
There are, you know, many ancient sculptures, headless,
armless, like things like this that again, you know, you get
really excited to see, like the Winged Victory in the Louvre,
(09:41):
except, you know, there's no head, so.
Is that because, and I'm not trying to put words in your
mouth, is it because art is typical through the male gaze?
Is that? Well, I think originally for the
sculptures, they're just broken.And I'm not sure why there are
more broken female sculptures than male.
It might just be like the necks and the arms are narrower.
I mean, it could be just simple,you know, kind of something
(10:04):
mechanical like that. But to your point, an artist
like Rodin, A sculpture like a sculptor like Rodin, I mean, a
lot of his work was indebted to those classical sculptures, but
he thought it was interesting tomake these female figures
without heads and without arms. I when I was in Graduate School
(10:28):
at Stanford, I worked for the Kantor Art Museum, their
conservation department, cleaning the outdoor sculpture
collection and they have a huge Rodin collection.
So I I have spent many hours thinking about this subject,
like scrubbing the backside of the burgers of Calais and
cleaning the gates of hell with a toothbrush.
(10:50):
Literally so. Has that become an actual piece
of work? No, no, no.
But in the moment that I was actually doing that, I was like,
I'm, I'm going to be able to talk about this for the rest of
my life. So, you know, after I thought a
lot about that experience with my daughter, she's not.
(11:12):
But I thought like, OK, maybe I can work with this.
Like, is it possible that I could make paintings in my
artworks that deal with the artworks both literally and
historically, and that the figures and the paintings are
being acted upon by those those imperatives or those impulses,
(11:38):
even if they're totally unconscious.
So that's kind of what you see. So in each of the paintings I've
curated, this really a historical and totally
ridiculous exhibition that may, you know, have a contemporary
painting by Mark Grochon next to, you know, Rembrandt's
(12:00):
Lucretia, where she's kind of stabbing herself after being
raped and her blood is splattering all over the museum.
But it's next to this Grochon painting, which also has this
kind of, it's like deep red withthis kind of expressive mark
making and a kind of strange face embedded in it.
(12:21):
And then in the space, there's ayoung child whose body is kind
of curling in on herself. And then there's a docent who's
clearly, you know, kind of explaining in historical terms
what these mean. So I like the idea of somehow
(12:43):
that the figures in the spaces are being gas lit a little bit
by the museums, like they're seeing something literally.
But then when you read the text panel, it's telling you like a
totally different story. So it's, you know, you're
basically, I mean, this is how this conditioning happens,
right, Right. You read about a master's piece,
but you're looking at it and you're like, but wait, she's
(13:05):
stabbing herself. Like what about that?
Like what about that story? So, so these are the kind of
things that unfold in the paintings.
There's a certain level of slapstick and chaos that I
really embrace and a lot of typeof behaviors that are not
(13:27):
appropriate in a museum. So I was I did a project with a
group of artists. It was part of a series of
Flux's performance projects at amajor museum in Los Angeles, in
the Brentwood neighborhood. And one of the pieces that we
wanted to make was a small sculpture that would go in the
(13:48):
urinal in the men's room. And the lawyers for the
institution rejected the piece because they did not want people
looking at art and looking at their genitals at the same time,
which I get. So, but I, I thought about it
and I've thought, OK, well, whatother things are like
inappropriate to do in front of an artwork?
(14:10):
You know, can you, can you bleedin front of an artwork?
Can you pick your nose? Is it OK to have Bo when you're
in a museum? You know, can you breastfeed
your baby in a museum? So these are these are all the
things that I'm kind of bringingtogether in the paintings.
And I mean in a pretty intuitiveway.
(14:33):
So I don't, you know, I'm not trying to lock down any
particular meaning, but I do have questions and ideas that
I'm thinking through in each of the paintings.
For use it like sampling, like how music samples, you know, and
then you're taking not a sample,but you're actually taking the
artwork and you're putting it init's artwork.
(14:56):
Within art, it's. It's an art piece within art.
Correct. Right.
It's that scene of literally if you were at a museum looking at
and you have to go to Elizabeth site to be able to see this and
understand what we're talking about here.
But so you you already know thatthere will be a piece that's in
there that you're going to use. Correct, correct.
And you know, and I'll think about if I want to change it at
(15:19):
all. So for example, I think Degas is
a good example. There's a a piece at the Getty,
I can't remember the name of it.Let's just say it's the bather.
It's like a it's a figure of a woman.
Whether she's getting into the tub or getting out, it's hard to
say. It's extremely awkward.
It's a very strange artwork. And in the wall text, they do
(15:41):
talk about Daga being kind of misogynistic and that he felt
that women were kind of manipulative.
And so in his work, he tried to paint them in these in between
moments when they were not able to sort of seduce men with their
coquetry, which I always felt about his work.
(16:05):
And I was like, so happy that the Getty actually put that in
the wall text. So for that.
So that was an interesting painting, and I included that in
one of my works, but I changed it a little so that the figure
was even more awkward and lookedlike she was sort of falling out
of the tub. So it felt much more like the
Three Stooges than Dega. And so that's the type of
(16:32):
experience like I might have in person with an artwork.
You know, there's a lot of interesting stories that come
from mythology, like Dan I who she was thrown into prison.
I won't go into why, but but basically she was not supposed
to have a child. And so Zeus, quote UN quote,
(16:56):
fell in love with her, as he didwith many women.
And he came to her in a golden shower.
And this, I know it's so funny. So this is a, this story has
been painted over and over with Dan.
I kind of sitting back like her breasts are open.
She's very young and beautiful and she's looking up and there's
(17:16):
like golden liquid falling down from the sky on her crotch.
And so this story, I think it needs very little assist for me
to be placed in the context of one of my paintings to be like
both weirdly comic but also kindof disturbing.
(17:37):
And, you know, there's a friction there.
And so if in a painting, if I have like 2 young girls kind of
looking quizzically at that image, something happens there.
There's like a friction between the figures in the space and the
painting that allows the viewer to sort of enter the painting.
(18:02):
I mean, I think the humor is hopefully it's disarming and it
kind of allows people to, you know, look at that critically as
well as maybe like, you know, think about the story, right?
So I'm going to assume that somepeople probably think that
you're messing with the masters.You're going in and stirring the
(18:22):
pod, You're agitating, you know,perfection.
How dare you. How have you pushed back against
that? How have you dealt with perhaps
the criticism or the, I would say anti establishment of what
it is that you are establishing?You know it's.
Interesting. I had an e-mail from a woman who
(18:45):
works for Christie's in London just kind of out of the blue.
And she wasn't, she wasn't critical, but she was I, she
was, she was very curious. She's like, what are you doing?
Like, anyway, we had a, we had alittle e-mail exchange about it.
I think that the humor is truly disarming.
(19:08):
And so I for people who find it a little bit upsetting to see
art history kind of manhandled in that way, I don't know what
to say to them other than, you know, this is a perspective.
You know, there are a lot of maybe, you know, you can look at
it from the perspective of the figures that are in the spaces.
(19:30):
They're not represented in art history.
And I'm trying to do that. I'm placing them in paintings
also amid these historical artworks.
And there they are. So now they're here.
And, you know, not to say that necessarily that my work is, you
know, going to be some kind of canonical art history, but even
(19:52):
if it's a tertiary flow of art history, they're there.
Well, it's I mean. It certainly is a commentary on
art history and how art history is taught.
And to your point, what is actually said in that history,
especially when it's not represented in the footnotes.
Yeah, and there's. A The painters I twombly near
(20:14):
the end of his life to this big series of paintings called
Bacchus. There are this yellow feel, this
yellow ground with they're painted with red paint.
Some have flowers, some just have these large sweeping curves
of red paint that kind of drips down.
And if you're familiar with Sai Twombly's work, he was very
(20:34):
interested in art history. So his paintings are abstract.
They used a lot of mixed media. He lived in Rome, so he was sort
of like embedded in in this veryhistorical place.
But I often wondered with those late paintings, those Bacchus
paintings, if he was really thinking about like art history
(20:56):
is a history of violence, which is it is, I mean, it's also a
history of beauty and power. And let's say, let's end it
right there. It's about power.
And it really that inspired me in a way.
I mean, again, this is my own interpretation.
There may be 40 art historians who are like, that's the dumbest
thing I've ever heard, but I don't care.
(21:17):
What happens if someone doesn't know that that's a part of art
history and there is a there's apainting within a painting.
How are they supposed to look atyour work?
That's a great. Question.
I think that they just have to interpret those artworks as if
they went to a museum and saw them on their own.
(21:37):
So hopefully they're looking at them in the very literal way
that my daughter did. And there are there are so many
signifiers though, like the way the figures are dressed or, you
know, if it's a portrait, the way the portrait is composed and
(21:58):
you know, the type of backgroundthat it has.
I mean, a lot of these things were very prescriptive at
different points in art history.And a lot of the artworks,
especially the ones that deal with violence, they do extend
into the spaces. So I am very interested in some
of these paintings that have like women in them and kind of
(22:21):
bloodless violence. So the story of Lucretia, so
she, she's raped and she stabs herself so she does not dishonor
her family. So this is like a teaching
story, right? But a lot, there's zillions of
paintings of Lucretia, and very few of them have blood, even
(22:43):
though she's got like a knife stabbed halfway into her chest.
So, you know, for a lot of those, for example, like, I'll
just like, make the blood spray everywhere in the museum.
So that's like pooling on the floor, spraying out into the in,
you know? And then there's like different
guests at the museum who are kind of standing around, like
(23:04):
looking at these pools of blood on the floor, which is funnier
than it sounds, I hope. It's ridiculous.
Let's let's put it that way. So there are also these ways
that I think even if you don't know Lucretia's story at all,
you can still kind of get that the paintings kind of some weird
(23:29):
type of history. It's interesting.
Right, because people would never say that art.
Incites violence. But yet rap music, music videos,
video games, all those other things get blamed for it.
But get to your point in these artworks where it's a bloodless
thing. No one, no one ever blames art
(23:52):
for doing that. But yet all the modern versions
and durations of it. So now that you've taken those
things that you've kind of, I don't want to say manifested
them, but you've interpreted them as being the thing that
they actually are by actually giving them the color that was
supposed to be there but yet wasomitted or for whatever reason,
the artist decided to do it, do it that way.
(24:13):
What's the commentary that you hope people take away from that?
Well, I think it's. Less about the artworks and more
about the figures in the spaces.You know, I'm I'm very
interested in ideas of care and vulnerabilities.
So these are at odds with prettymuch everything that we've
talked about so far. But I a lot of the children in
(24:39):
the in the museums are being cared for by a parent or a
guardian or a sibling or something.
So they're kind of experiencing something that's sort of a
trauma in the painting. And they may be kind of acting
out in a certain way in the gallery space.
But, but for many of them, thereis also someone who's caring for
(25:02):
them and they're like I mentioned before, you know,
there are a lot of pregnant figures, a lot of nude pregnant
figures, younger, younger girls.You know, I told you I grew up
on a farm and in this kind of rural area, I there were lots of
(25:25):
young, not let's say not lots, but they were often at any given
time, you know, a pregnant teenager at high school or more
than one. And this was not this was not a
surprise. And they are extremely
vulnerable. I was reading an article
recently that said that homicideis the leading cause of death of
(25:51):
pregnant women or new parents you by firearms.
And that rate of homicide is higher for women of color than
it is for white women. And it's I think establishing
that pregnancy is a really vulnerable time and that, you
know, women, women's choice about whether they go through
(26:16):
that experience or not is being removed is important.
So while I am not saying that explicitly in the artwork, I
think it's important by simply placing these figures in the
spaces, it's even if it's in a like a kind of a comic setting,
(26:37):
it's disarming in a way that allows people who may even
disagree with my political beliefs to consider that these
are human beings who have a life, who are, you know, by
choice or by force entering intoa contract with the world that
(27:00):
could end their own life. So I have like a pretty serious
intent with these paintings. And but again, the
representation of these figures,you know, if you think about
like the thousands or even millions of like nude female
figures and paintings, like how many nude pregnant figures are
(27:21):
there in historical artworks? Not very many, like, I don't
know, none, maybe a couple. It's not it's not a thing.
It's not a prominent. Thing, right, Yeah, so.
I don't know, it's interesting, like how glaring like it is.
If you see older women in paintings, you know, they're
usually like the Crone who's like whispering in a young
(27:45):
beautiful woman's ear. Very, you know, there's older
women in portraiture, but also, again, maybe not that many
because they weren't leaders or they weren't rulers.
So, yeah. So my intention is really to
create images that allow people to think about issues maybe a
(28:06):
little bit differently, even if they, you know, aren't
necessarily on board with like my, my kind of strict view of
the world. What is unapologetically
creative mean to you when you hear that in terms of.
Being unapologetic I'm unapologetic about my views of
art history. I'm unapologetic about creating
(28:29):
artworks that ask people to hold, you know, 2 contradictory
ideas in their mind at one time.I'm unapologetic about children,
about vulnerable people. And I, I just, I think it's
important. And these are, you know, these
are the ideas that seem to work really well in my paintings.
(28:56):
Elizabeth's paintings ask us to sit with discomfort, humor,
contradiction, and most importantly, care through
figures she places in her Imagine Museum pieces children,
pregnant people, the elderly, she.
Reclaims. Visibility for those our history
has overlooked or erased. Her work?
(29:18):
Reminds us that even within the quiet reverence of a museum,
there is space for resistance, tenderness, and new stories as
she continues to challenge the Canon unapologetically.
Elizabeth. Invites us to look again and to
really see. Thanks for listening to
Unapologetically Creative. Be sure to follow the show and
(29:41):
stay. Tuned.
For more insightful conversations in the episodes
ahead to learn more about the Vermont College of Fine Arts,
visit vcfa.edu.
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