Elizabeth Chapin
The Center: Advanced Mentorship Program Participant (2021 - 2024)
Elizabeth Chapin is a Contemporary American portrait artist whose mixed media work explores and deconstructs ideas of archetypes, anxiety, gender roles and the status quo through an anthropological lens. Chapin’s background as a traditional portrait artist has evolved, incorporating materials like undulating fringe, plexiglass, silk and tulle rues, neon and LED, onto stued canvas. These dynamic elements turn a flat painting into a 3D manifestation.
Born in Jackson, MS, Chapin received her BFA at the University of Virginia and has also studied at The Parson School of Design in Paris. Her work has been exhibited extensively across the United States including in New York, NY; Austin, TX; New Orleans, LA; Nashville, TN; and Jackson, MS, among others. In 2020, she was awarded a residency in Florence, Italy, through Feminist Art Collective Toronto. In 2022 she was invited to participate in an intensive 3 year mentorship program under the internationally acclaimed artists Shahzia Sikander and Holly Hughes. Also, in 2022, Chapin was chosen for a seven-week solo exhibition at Women and their Work, a catalyst for contemporary art in Texas. Her work has been featured on platforms such as Whitewall, Forbes Magazine, Design Milk, Luxe and Artsy, among others.
Her most recent body of work, Banishment of Solitude, explores how archetypal and foundational myths inform women’s responses to themselves and each other irl and online. Using a frame of Greek, Sumerian, Egyptian and biblical stories, Chapin deconstructs the crafted identities we present to the world, likening social media to an ongoing religion of both self creation and self exile. First exhibited at Martine Chaisson Gallery in 2021, Banishment of Solitude is the artist’s first body of work that pushes the bounds of what defines painting, stung the canvas to create 3-dimensional environments, many of which are lit, contain secret pockets and aromatic features. Chapin lives and works in Austin, TX.