At a moment in history when art styles are varied and fleeting, Liz Gribin, an artist with a highly personal vision and the integrity of deeply-felt emotion, commands our attention
and respect. Uninfluenced by what is in the marketplace, she paints as she has always painted, searching to lay bare the complex influences of an uncommon life. Her pursuit of gallery exposure was less a priority than that of making art, and discovering the paths where it would lead her – her sense of direction is a good one.
Surely there are influences. The placement of her figures owes something to an involvement with Japanese prints, whose specialness had equal appeal to Monet and Whistler. Though she does not make portraits in the conventional sense, her figure studies are of every woman, combining universal symbols of such female characteristics as angst, empathy and dormant power. Her color is subtle, luminous. There is a sweep in the attenuated brush strokes, a savoring of the medium. Her paintings are timeless, set in no particular era, but reflecting a feeling of elegance rather than grunge.
At this stage in her life, Liz Gribin is an artist free to devote herself entirely to the passion that has sustained her interest and commitment for nearly six decades. Living in the art colony known as “The Hamptons”, she has multiple benefits: the light that so entranced the artists Childe Hassam and Thomas Moran, a hundred years ago, and Fairfield Porter and Willem de Kooning in the recent past; the enriching view of sky and trees as seen from her huge studio window.
This artist’s quiet authority is apparent both in person and in her work.