Elizabeth Shull
Los Angeles, CA
Website
www.eashull.com
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your work?
I am particularly interested in exploring the place where one’s inner landscape speaks to and blends with one’s geographic location, this being the most time sensitive palette of discovery. By translating and documenting my thoughts and responses, I am learning of my distinct legacy, in a sense, investigating and finding my place in the most reactionary way. My work is small in scale, intended to be viewed closely and quietly much like reading a poem. Often I refer to my work as visual poetry. I am awestruck by the natural world and often attempt to make sense of grand stories by reacting to and interpreting things in a gentle, prayerful, sublime way.
What inspires you?
I am inspired by the challenge to viscerally translate my curiosities, the big and little things, the awe and wonder of natural rhythms, the metaphorical stories apparent in everything, the repetition of design through all we see. The poet Mary Oliver addressed this topic by simply stating that she wrote poetry to find “one’s place in the family of things.” We search for our own elegant presence and try to make sense of it. What inspires me is literally watching my hand play each “story” out, not over thinking decisions while working and letting deep interests reveal themselves. Each piece is a bit like archeology. The challenge and risks taken with each piece always lead to discovery of something new and powerful. Discovery inspires discovery.
Can you speak about your process?
My process is about challenge and exploration via translating a thought, word, or memory.
Sometimes it is a combination of all three. I’ve thought a great deal about this lately in trying to understand how I arrived at this place of working small and wanting to “document” as much about my thinking as possible. In my late teens and early twenties I felt certain I wanted to pursue creative writing. In college I took an art class to fulfill a general ed requirement and was wooed to the art department by the Chair and somehow allowed to work independently although I never abandoned my interest in the written word. Perhaps that was the beginning of satisfaction with experimentation and being attentive to my own rhythms. This process has been a way to remain authentic and pursue documenting my sense of place with the most honesty.
When I begin a piece I never presketch or edit my thought before beginning. The first marks lead those following. The magic happens when the image begins to appear, almost like a hologram and very much like the photographic printing process in a dark room. The risks in mark making result in my becoming aware of something extraordinarily new.
How did you become interested in art?
From a very young age I remember being enamored by the transformation of things... how something begins and ends as something else. This is a challenging question because art to me is a way of being and how one moves through and interprets one’s space, being enchanted by the richness of environments. I take my time observing things, listening, and asking questions, to the annoyance of many. Seems I have always been curious and in awe of what is “in front” of me. Artfulness is how one moves through time, reacting, collecting... trying to make sense of one’s unique experiences, all the while comprehending how universal one’s thoughts and sensitivities actually are.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
I have long lists that keep growing. So many artists, past and present, I respect. Oftentimes I am more interested in their process and investigating their individuality.
Regarding books, I gravitate towards non-fiction and poetry, it is the quest to gather information. I have always appreciated the precision and efficiency of poetry. I respond to the blending of concise words with nuances of abstraction and rhythm.
I listen to many music genres. I am intrigued with how musicians interpret and share “language,’ a beautifully different palette and yet they compose with the same “colors” as I do.
These are some of the quotes up on my studio wall:
AGNES MARTIN: You can ask me for my definition of art if you want.
JOAN SIMON: Ok, I will. What is it please?
AGNES MARTIN: Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.
YOUNG CHIEF, of the Cayuses Tribe(upon signing over their lands to the US Government in 1855): I wonder if the Ground has anything to say? I wonder if the Ground is listening to what is said.
GEORGIA O’KEEFE: Making your unknown known is the important thing–and keeping the unknown always beyond you.
ROBERTA SMITH (excerpt from a review in the NY Times of an exhibition at The Drawing Center 2022): Just as drawings bring us close to an artist’s thoughts, feelings, touch with an intimacy that sometimes seems metabolic, they provoke spontaneous responses that can show us new sides of ourselves.
MARY OLIVER from Upstream: Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.
LINDSEY ADELMAN: What is real is what we can’t see.
What advice do you have for younger artists?
Something I remind myself of regularly is to be patient and have compassion for oneself. One must be attentive to one’s individual interests and rhythms while protecting one’s freedom in exploration and interpretation. It is extremely difficult to remain steadfast to oneself so it is important to remember, always, to be your you.
