Silicon Valley Open Studios

About Elizabeth Cody

I have a keen interest in objects and our relationship to them. In 2018 I wrote my MFA thesis about objects. I make sculpture and installations using found objects and objects that I make myself. The scale of the objects, the shape, the color, and simply what they mean to me--and you--are important to me in making sculpture and installation. It is as if I am making a 3d painting. I find working in 3d super interesting.

For 30 years I have been a painter. I speak with paint. I paint from the live model, some of whom were painted by the Bay Area Figurative school. My work is loose, on the border between figurative and abstract. My athletic style is driven by color, line and gesture. I studied Comparative Literature at Brown University--so I love words, and sometimes they show up in my work.

My style is athletic, driven by color, line, gesture, a connection to the model, and humor. My work radiates a contagious spirit. My style is fearless. My work is also about time — it takes either a very short or a very long time to make each piece— the quick can be better than the slow. I am about the process of painting, getting lost in it, and changes that occur, whether intentional or not. A figure becomes a landscape, a landscape becomes a figure. With a well-seen gesture and a bold decisive line, finished work can happen in a minute. Humor can be present in the work; in my life and in the studio it is usually near me, well within reach.

Other things: I was born in San Francisco and grew up in Burlingame. I am a competitive tennis player, California lawyer and legal recruiter. Last summer I was awarded an MFA in studio art from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. I show my work in a gallery in Chelsea, New York City.