Elizabeth
Starnes' Bio
When Elizabeth Starnes talks about
painting you can feel her passion and see both ambition and
soulful spirit in her eyes. One can sense that art is her soul
mate – the center of her universe. And so it should be to
someone with as much talent as Elizabeth possesses. With brush
and paint Elizabeth has the remarkable ability to capture a
person’s soul on canvas. Her artistic soulful nature is evident
in her work.
“It started out
of boredom in an old farmhouse in upstate New York,” she says.
As a child on Sunday afternoons Elizabeth sat in front of the
fireplace, replicating the Sunday comics while her father
watched football. “I was amazed I could even do it!” When she
drew, time and space seemed stop for her. “I would completely
lose myself somewhere in the artwork.”
Although she
had the artistic itch very early on in life, it wasn’t until she
was about 15 that she really realized how much she liked
drawing. Her mother recognized her talent and enrolled her in a
high school with a good art program. It was there that she fell
in love with faces. Unfortunately her art teacher wouldn’t let
the students try their hand at portraits until everything else
imaginable was drawn. “It wasn’t until the second semester that
she let us bring in photographs and start drawing from them.”
After high
school Elizabeth set aside her artistic ability. “Life moves on
and can sometimes steer us away from who we really are,” she
says. It wasn’t until about seven years ago that she picked up
her passion for art and began creating again. “I couldn’t ignore
it anymore.” She had the desire to learn to work with color and
it was then that she found a teacher who helped her begin her
work with watercolor. Elizabeth found that she loved the way
watercolors flowed and enjoyed creating faces with it. “I was
worried that because I hadn’t really produced anything for so
many years, that maybe I had lost it, but then I discovered I
never lost it at all. I paint from a soulful place of emotion.
With life experiences comes change and what we do grows and
changes with us.”
It wasn’t
long after this artistic rebirth that Elizabeth began winning
awards, entering juried shows, and doing commission work. “I
never intended to do portrait work for people,” she says. “I
just wanted to learn how to paint people and faces.” Starnes
recalls looking at other’s work and wanting to be able to paint
with precision and passion. She says her paintings are not
complete until she is able to feel the spirit behind the face
and hear the portrait talk. This is a result of viewing her
subjects with such a soulful eye.
When asked about the artistic process, Elizabeth says she takes
a series of photographs. “The best thing is capturing the
emotion of the moment. The true nature of a person comes through
on their face when they are in a natural state. Just sitting
somewhere lost in thought or having a conversation, a person
becomes present in a totally different way. This can create a
great moment inside the painting.” Her goal is to capture the
spirit of her subject, and who they really are. Elizabeth
wants people to be able to walk up to her paintings and feel the
emotion of the person or hear the giggling of the child who
comes alive on the canvas. Painting is a divine process for her
and she is happy to be a part of it.
Rancher's Magazine; July 2006
(author: Cassandra Key)
Click on image for enlargement. |
