Liz Holzman Virtual Gallery

		Liz Holzman
Gallery links	Click on image to view the painting. Click again to return. Click on painting or here to go back.	Liz Holzman

I was born in Oakland , California in 1953. My parents were involved in the arts and sciences: my father had a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Cal Tech and was an accomplished artist in glass; my mother studied Botany and was a watercolorist. I began painting at age 15 and taught myself by studying the works of many artists. After receiving a BA in Art from Mills College I became interested in film and animation and went on to receive an MFA from Cal Arts in Film Graphics, creating three animated films, and becoming a regional finalist in the Student Academy Awards.

I worked for 25 years in the animation industry in Los Angeles at several studios, including Disney, and notably, I worked as a director and producer (and occasional writer) for Warner Brothers TV Animation. In this capacity, I received three Emmy Awards as well as other industry recognitions. My filmography includes Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs, Baby Blues, and The Zeta Project. During this period I also was a prolific painter, doing landscapes, portraits and still-lifes, primarily in oils, and experimented with different lighting conditions, including night painting and twilight.

2010	Telfair Museum Juried Show	Savannah, GA
2010	University of St. Francis Faculty Show	Fort Wayne, IN
2010	Artlink Juried Show	Fort Wayne, IN
2009	Art Institute of Portland Walls and Bridges Artist Retrospective	Portland, OR
2009	Froelick Gallery Juried Show	Portland, OR
2009	Hollywood Theater Auction	Portland, OR

Painting, for me, is a process of opening myself to the world by creating a bridge between what I see and what I feel. The painting itself is this bridge, and in a way, is one reason why bridges are frequent subjects for me. A bridge spans the unconscious element of water, which embodies emotion or the psyche. It is a human construct we use to define space or time or ideas. I find water, too, a powerful subject because it is always moving, always changing, always reflecting. It looks like many things, but in truth it is also only one thing. All water is connected, as all humans are connected, all life is connected. It has volume and power and force as well as simplicity and delicacy.

I always listen to music, if I can, when I paint. Music is the most powerful artform, in my opinion. It brings a listener closest to a state of receptivity of being. I also only paint onsite, because for me the experience of being present in a place and receptive to it, can only happen in reality, not in my imagining or in a studio.

My heroes and teachers in painting have been varied: Manet, Courbet, Van Gogh, Winslow Homer, Sargent, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Botticelli, Velasquez, Goya, Tiepolo, Canaletto, Breughel. Monet and his impressionists never moved me in particular, and I have some aversion to Renoir. I suppose these reactions are somewhat impulsive and intuitive, but truth has many faces and expressions. Van Gogh moves me to tears, and Gauguin feels egotistical. We all have our reactions to art and I don't expect my opinions and feelings to be universal, or even correct, if such a thing exists. I do expect of myself as a painter to realize a level of truth in my work which is sometimes painfully drawn out, and when I fall short of it, I am unforgiving.

I keep remembering that we only have a brief short moment to be alive on this most improbable bit of real estate in eternity, and that though there is no such thing as permanence or universal truth, there does exist in the moment an opportunity for touching something that comes very close to emotional truth. It is as fleeting as music, though it be written in stone. But for what else do we exist?