Elizabeth Nelson was born in New York City, graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and received a master’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When she moved to a farm in northern Vermont she became part of the working landscape for more than forty years, working on and managing her dairy farm with her husband. They started with ten heifers and ended with three hundred cows twenty seven years later. She has always painted even during her work as a teacher, a farmer, a museum curator and during her life with her children and family. She has shown paintings in many venues in Vermont, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts, and is represented in galleries and permanent private and public collections in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and California. She has won two Vermont Public Art commissions of eight paintings and her work is part of the Vermont State Art Collection.
She was a resident artist in Iceland for two months in 2017 and 2018. This experience expanded her vision and deepened her commitment to the beauty of the northern landscape in particular.
“After a short visit to Iceland in 2012, I experienced an irresistible magnetic pull, a need to be there again for a longer time to paint what I saw and felt of the landscape and weather; to be a part of the life there. Five years later I was able to return to Iceland twice as a resident in SĺM, (the Association of Icelandic Artists) an organization that supports a cultural exchange of visual artists with all countries of the world.
As a result of that experience my painting began to be more of a collaboration. Sometimes exactly what I thought I was painting remained as I had painted it. But quite often when the paint dried the image had changed. Instead of being the solitary maker, the paint and the surface had their say too. The progression of time became important to the process. Each level of the painting simultaneously revealing and camouflaging-- perhaps reflecting the changing weather of Iceland, or the changing stability of the earth underneath, or my deepening shifts of perception.”