We were lucky to catch up with Elizabeth Barlow recently and have shared our conversation below.
Elizabeth, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I work six days a week in my studio (seven, if I’m on a deadline) for about 4-5 hours of actual painting time at the easel . People often say to me “You are so disciplined.” And I always think “You are entirely missing the point!” First of all, my work is very time-intensive — I paint in many consecutive layers which over time create the luminosity that I seek. The hours are a requirement to make my work. But most importantly, my work ethic comes from my devotion to my art. Discipline is going to the gym or getting my car serviced. Devotion is showing up because I have a slow-burning desire to see my work take form and be seen in the world. I find inspiration in the ballet dancer who shows up at the barre every single day and in the jazz pianist working long hours, day after day, on speed and rhythm. We aren’t disciplined, we are passionately devoted. Trust me, there are days when I would rather have a lazy lunch with a friend, or go to a matinee movie. But the joy and satisfaction that comes from showing up at the easel is far bigger than most lunches or films. Devotion is a form of love, and I believe it is made manifest in the work itself.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I live in Carmel-by-the-Sea on California’s beautiful Central Coast. I walk to my studio every day, which is in a historic church in our town surrounded by a garden.
Before living here, we lived in San Francisco for two decades and my work reflected the vibrant, bustling cosmopolitan life I led in the city. I was known for a series of paintings called “Portraits in Absentia” in which I used my subject’s belongings to create their portraits. My Portraits in Absentia paintings included golf balls, stilettos, lipsticks, books, opera scores, ballet pointe shoes and footballs. They were a kind of archeology in paint.
Then in 2018, my work was transformed dramatically by a single painting. A collector invited me to create a work for his soon-to-be built vineyard home in Sonoma. The homeowner and his wife lost their prior home in the horrible 2017 Wine Country Fires, barely escaping with their lives. Everything on the property was destroyed and the only things that survived were the vines and one rose bush. Even more tragedy followed when the wife died several months later. But then something amazing happened. That single rose bush began to bloom gloriously. The homeowner decided to build a new house on the same site and asked me to create a 6-foot painting of that rose bush for the house. We titled the painting “The Phoenix Rose,” because it literally rose out of the ashes.
Although I had already been painting flowers for some time, “The Phoenix Rose” showed me that flowers can be powerful messengers. They seduce us with their beauty and then offer potent lessons of hope, renewal and presence. From that moment on, I have been painting larger-than-life hyper-realistic flowers. The beauty of a flower is the lure, and it beckons us to an awakening. We are awakened from our sleep of busy-ness into the miracle of the present moment.
This year was a big year for my flora portraits. The Monterey Museum of Art featured my work in the exhibition Flora Fauna (alongside Susan Manchester), and they acquired one of my paintings for the permanent collection. And I had a nearly-sold out show at Andra Norris Gallery in the Bay Area. It’s gratifying to know that people are responding to the messages of my flowers.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
This is such a great question!
The three qualities/skills I feel are most important are: study, openness and generosity. (Devotion is number one, but I’ve already talked about that!) Whatever our art form or enterprise, we must study with devotion so that we gain the technical and life knowledge that are the foundation of our practices. Once I decided to devote myself to painting, I threw myself into study and sought out the best teachers for me.
The most valuable advice I ever received was from my late artist father who said, “Always sit next to the best person in the room.” In art classes, as in life, the most accomplished artists tend to sit at the front of the room, close to the model. He was telling me to not meekly sit at the back of the room, but to find the person whose work I most admired and sit next to them. It’s a way of honoring your own voice/talent (however hidden it may still be) and of closely observing the people you admire.
Openness of mind and spirit is the second quality I think is important. You can be the most talented person on earth, but if your mind and heart are closed, you will not be able to grow. Being open of spirit allows our talent to be nourished on a regular basis by new ideas, strange encounters, obstacles to be overcome and unexpected wonders.
Finally, there is generosity. So many people have generously shown me the way, championed my work, opened doors for me. And I try every day to keep that generosity alive and flowing back out into the world.
We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
This is such a wonderful and complex question! I believe we need to do both. First, we need to identify and fully embrace our strengths and build a foundation beneath them so that they can flourish and live in the world. In my case, one of my strengths is my talent and my devotion to it. So, spending longs hours in the studio and creating works of beauty are what come “easily” (ha, ha) to me. But I also know that I must invest in learning skills that are NOT natural (or even enjoyable) to me. So, I recently made a sizable financial investment in a year-long mastermind marketing course for artists. Could I outsource this entirely? I suppose. But I believe I need to understand how the marketing world is changing at lightening speed — and how I can find a sustainable way to utilize it for my art. I think of myself as a shepherd — and my art is my flock of sheep. It is my job to shepherd my work into the world so that it can be experienced and shared. And if I need to learn about the ins and outs of digital marketing (ugh), then I will do it on behalf of my art, and I might even find satisfaction and joy in it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.elizabethbarlowart.com
- Instagram: @elizabethbarlowartist
- Youtube: @elizabethbarlow7525
Image Credits
Rick Pharaoh Rick Forscino
