Elizabeth Schafer, a painter of music, was born in Eldorado, Ill. on Friday the thirteenth, setting the stage for her life to come. She grew up in the mid-west in Evansville, Ind. where she learned the foundations of hard work and good ethics. At 18 years of age, she left the mid-west far behind yearning for more of life’s experiences. Both music and art have been a driving force throughout her life, and combining the two passions into a series of artworks has been a natural extension allowing her to express a dynamic style and energy. Relaying the pure love for life, these abstractions are rhythmically constructed and address music and movement with a daring and dramatic flair. Each piece is in the truest sense an improvisation, allowing the art to progress extemporaneously, on its own, — taking shape and coming alive filled with energy.

“My challenge of taking an abstract concept, portraying it as an abstraction, and still making it concrete to communicate my muse has been a wonderful, tantalizing journey. And here along the Gulf Coast, I found myself in the hotbed for inspiration; Mississippi, the birth of the blues; and New Orleans, the birth of jazz and the gateway for African, Caribbean, South American, and Acadian rhythms and beats. My mind is constantly filled with imagery as I listen to music, enjoying the energy and rhythms. My love of music is expressed as the pure joy of sound forming dynamic textural compositions on canvas.”

Schafer has been a professional artist over 17 years, galleries representing her are Maggie May’s, Bay St. Louis, Miss., Artworks, Richmond, Va., and New Harmony Contemporary Art Gallery, New Harmony, Ind.. She has exhibited most notably in the Smithsonian Museum’s Museum on Main Street program, and at William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library, Minnetonka Center for the Arts, Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, Meridian Museum of Art, Gulf Coast Community College, and Meridian Community College. She is a member of the Mississippi Art Colony, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Del Ray Artisans and The ARTs Hancock County. Her works reside in collections at Vanderbilt University, Florida Institute of Technology, Meridian Community College, Bay St. Louis Bridge, and Omni Royal Orleans. She has been published in “Katrina, Reflections of Mississippi Women,” “Walking on Water,” “The Art of the Storm, a documentary film,” Art in America, Art Gulf Coast, Florida Tech Today, Where, and Times Picayune. Her academic background includes a Bachelor of Science degree in Geological Oceanography from Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Fla.

artist resume