Elizabeth Powell is a painter and printmaker in Burlington Vermont. She earned her MA and MFA in Printmaking and Painting from the University of Iowa in 2020 and a BA in Economics and Fine Arts from the University of Vermont in 2016.  She has a keen interest in color theory, patterning, and the morphology of shapes as psychological representations of femininity. Having extensively studied gender inequality in her economic studies, Powell explores the way the same sociological differences that lead to a systemic economic imbalance between men and women, present themselves in visual taste for form, pattern, and color. 

Since finishing her MFA, Powell has had solo shows in Iowa, upstate New York and Vermont. Her most recent show was at Hexum Gallery in Montpelier, Vermont. Powell has attended residencies with BreckCreate in Breckenridge, Colorado, InCahoots in Petaluma, California, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico, Surel’s Place in Garden City, Idaho and the Vermont Studio Center in  Johnson, Vermont. 

Bodily; suggestive and alluring. My work consists of shapes that are often torsi-like, developed from a lexicon of figures that I began while experiencing pain because of endometriosis, a chronic illness where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus. I instinctively began to draw and abstract the shape of my own body to reconnect and reclaim it. I continue to draw these abstract bodies, creating pseudo-symmetrical forms that resemble rorschach tests; bulbous and tumor-like. I turn my drawings into paintings that are more abstract prompt than representation.  

I often create overlying structures that accompany my abstract figures. These "nets" entered my work because of a fascination with lingerie and how it forces bodies into geometric shapes, as if packaged. These superimposed structures are as much cage as they are a decorative adornment; jewelry amplifying what lies beneath, laced with ribbons. They simultaneously support, constrict, and even impale the bodies in my work; bodies that are forced to develop within and around the rigid, oppressive, structures. 

Lately my fascination with lingerie has morphed into an interest in the many ropes and knots in bondage. Ties of silk that are soft to the touch but still have the ability to chafe as they force bodies into unnatural and often uncomfortable positions. Between these nets and figures my work seeks to explore the perplexities of femininity created by the societal decorum of beauty and the conflation of expression and repression found in the female form. My work explores the tension between the biological and the psycho-social. 

In installation I use the multiplicity inherent in printmaking to create patterns out of the shapes I draw. Pattern is symbolic of repeated sensations and action; implying a repetitive nature to a depicted feeling. The expanding forms in my work create an enveloping structure that has a continuous effect upon its surroundings; an immersive experience that simultaneously seduces, entraps, and enraptures the viewer. While beautiful, the overwhelming amount of patterning has an insidious effect on the psychological state of the viewer: becoming oppressive. In this way the images take mastery over their beholder, demanding attention, and refusing to go unnoticed despite the feminine being so often ignored.

Within the patterned backgrounds my individual works of art act as interruptions to the patterns. These defiant moments in conjunction with the structure of a repeat allows the work to embody the conflation of expression and repression that originally compelled me to draw the figure, and the paradox of liberation defined by bounds.