Elizabeth Awalt studied painting at Boston College, where she was later a tenured professor. She received her graduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, under the direction of Neil Welliver, and later studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. She was twice awarded a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, as well as artist residencies at the Millay Colony in Austerlitz, New York; The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire and at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York. She has been the recipient of a Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fellowship in Painting and an Individual Artist Grant for Painting from the National Endowment for the Arts and has exhibited widely, both nationally and abroad including the Thomas Segal Gallery, Boston, MA; G.W. Einstein Company, Inc., NYC; Samuelis Baumgarte Gallery, Germany; Soprafina Gallery, Boston, MA; and the Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA. Her work has also appeared in numerous group shows, which have appeared at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Connecticut; the Center for Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME., the Concord Art Association, Concord, MA; the Decordova Museum of Art, Lincoln, MA; the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD; the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, Boston, MA, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; and the Orlando Museum of Art, Florida and the Rose Art Museum. Most recently, Awalt participated in the 2019 Havana Biennial in Mantanzas, Cuba, which included five works from her Coral Reef series.
About her recent series of Swans Island Ink Paintings Awalt writes “On the shore in front of my Swans Island house lie many hidden, magical tide pools. I carry my paint out to the furthest reaches of low tide, trying not to slip, and find a spot to sit on a wet rock. I push rockweed aside and the pool reveals a miniature world of color, texture and sea life. These underwater landscapes are abstract worlds that evolve and change as I paint with liquid transparent inks and watercolors. I find these materials work best to reflect the fluid nature of the subject and as I paint I abandon my need to describe the subject. I work quickly as the tide is always turning and I am excited when the painting suggests the experience of looking, slipping, and being washed away.”
Liz Awalt, July 13, 2020
Awalt’s Ink Paintings are featured in “Eternity in an Hour” – a virtual exhibition winter 2021. Eternity in an Hour 2021_ecatalog
Elizabeth has launched an extraordinary online art community project to honor and memorialize Covid19 lives lost. To learn more follow this link:The Marking Lives Covid-19 Project — The Arithmetic of Compassion
Awalt’s latest curatorial accomplishment, “UNDERCURRENTS Water + Human Impact” runs from June 16- August 1, 2022 at the Concord Center for the Visual Arts: undercurrents_e-catalog 2
