Elizabeth Peyton
The faces of history
“Capturing time is something I think is really important—the need to stop and put it in picture.”
Elizabeth Peyton creates gestural, atmospheric paintings and works on paper that attest to the psychical and emotional depths of the people she paints. Her artworks map out delicate negotiations between beauty, desire, and the pictorial image. Peyton finds feeling in all that she depicts. Whether it's people from her own milieu or figures from history, literature, music or film, she always renders each scene with the intensity of her own particular humanism – a close and loving look at humanity. In each figure's uniqueness, she reveals the universal emotions that connect us to each other and t...
Elizabeth Peyton creates gestural, atmospheric paintings and works on paper that attest to the psychical and emotional depths of the people she paints. Her artworks map out delicate negotiations between beauty, desire, and the pictorial image. Peyton finds feeling in all that she depicts. Whether it's people from her own milieu or figures from history, literature, music or film, she always renders each scene with the intensity of her own particular humanism – a close and loving look at humanity. In each figure's uniqueness, she reveals the universal emotions that connect us to each other and to art, and which stretch from our present moment back through time.
Throughout her career, Peyton has been fascinated by artists and cultural influences from history and our current times. Her artmaking is driven by an openness and curiosity that seeks to approach and understand her subjects and their creative practices. As Peyton describes: “I am listening to that person’s music, or I am seeing that person’s art, or just thinking about somebody a lot, or want to know more... Like with a piece of music, I will just keep following it, listening to it. And then I want to make a picture of that person.”
Portrait courtesy of Inez & Vinoodh
Elizabeth Peyton (she/her) was born 1965 in Connecticut, United States. Today, she lives and works in New York.
Following her first solo exhibition in 1987, Peyton’s work was presented in a number of nontraditional exhibition venues, including the water closet at former New York restaurant Novecento (1992); in Room 828 of the Hotel Chelsea (1993) and at the Prince Albert Pub in London (1995).
Peyton is the recipient of several awards including the Larry Aldrich Award, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2006), and more recently was an honoree at the 2018 New Museum Gala.
