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The Sasse: Where love stories develop between art and viewer |
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A View from the Studio | Elizabeth Gorcey |
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| "There's so much depth in my process, in the persistence of trying to capture something that can't fully be captured. Sometimes I don't need anything at all. Just the quiet." |  |
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My studio is located in Santa Monica, California, specifically at the Airport Art Hangars. There are about 30 other artists that have spaces there as well. My creation of work is constantly evolving, never fixed, always shifting alongside my inner world. I'm deeply empathic and feel things intensely, and I paint because I must. It isn't a choice so much as a necessity. Painting is how I process my emotions, a way to translate what I feel into something visible and tangible. I'm drawn to faces and figures, but not in a literal way. I'm not trying to recreate how someone looks on the outside. I don't see just blonde hair or blue eyes. I see something underneath that. A feeling, a moment, a kind of quiet truth about who they are. I'm trying to catch that... something that can't really be explained. It's less about the person as they appear physically and more about their presence, their energy, their soul. Sometimes it feels like I'm painting a memory of them, or maybe how they felt to me rather than how they actually looked. My work becomes a mix of them and me: what I see, what I feel, what I hold onto. I usually have about four pieces going at the same time, moving between them depending on what's pulling at me. Some paintings stay with me for months. I need that distance. When I come back, it's like the canvas has shifted. It shows me where it wants to go, not the other way around. At the end of a session, when there's paint left on the palette, I don't like to waste it. I'll start something new, instinctive, without thinking too much. Those pieces are different: faster, looser, more honest in a way. I never know what's going to happen with them. A lot of the time I end up painting right over them, layer after layer, pieces hidden underneath, still there even if you can't see them anymore. My inspiration comes from everywhere, often when I'm not even looking for it. I remember once I started painting a woman lying in the grass, calm, almost still. But while I was in the middle of it, a friend told me her son had died. Everything shifted. The painting couldn't stay what it was. It turned into a figure tearing their heart out, the colors darkening, thick with red, like something spilling over. That happens sometimes. The work changes because life interrupts it. In the end, my work is about what lives beneath the surface: grief, joy, memory, presence, connection. Through my art, I hope to reach those carrying struggles, to let them know they are seen, heard, and not alone in what they feel. |
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The Bridge | oil on canvas |
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studio view |
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| instagram: @elizabeth_gorcey_art | |||||
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