Artist Bio
Liz Gomez was born in San Angelo, Texas but was predominantly raised in San Antonio and other sunny places. She received her Associate of Arts in San Antonio, and spent several years working as a portrait artist in various theme parks around the United States before moving to Chicago for her education. She completed her BFA in 2014, from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and remains based in Illinois. Her practice focuses on broadening the spectrum of large-scale portraiture to include those who in the past have been overlooked or misrepresented. Liz’s current practice focuses on a series of collaborative full length and life size portraits of very close and inspiring women in her life. Through conversation they combine their ideas and create paintings that not only represents the person at that time in life but nurture Liz’s personal artistic expression of form, color and material.
In this series, she has made the conscious decision to paint mostly women. Individuals from different lifestyles, social classes, ages and cultures. This is because within portraiture there is a history of women as seen through the eyes of men, from the perspective of the wealthy, or as an object of beauty to be captured but not mentally considered. Her work seeks to further complicate the spectrums of culture and self-perception in relation to the art of portraiture and representation. Bringing not only her experiences into the work but also the minds and histories of the individuals she portrays.