Locks Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Elizabeth Osborne, on view February 15th through March 30th, 2011. There will be a reception for the artist on Friday, March 4th, from 5:30 to 7:30pm.
For her Locks Gallery show, Osborne will exhibit paintings that launch a major, new direction for the artist - pure abstraction. Nature and its attributes - temperature, light and air - are evident in these paintings, but the references are distilled in planar, expanses of color.
Osborne’s work was most recently featured in a retrospective exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (2009). Curator Bob Cozzolino notes that the artist’s work has bridged both a lifelong study of the landscape and an evocative style that approched abstraction. He writes, in the retrospective exhibition catalog: “Osborne’s translations of nature through the methods of soaked pigment, ecstatic and hallucinatory chroma, and evocative brush gestures conjure touch, taste, and scent. This subjective, experiential exploration of landscape reveals her place in the lineage of American landscape painting as well as her compelling role in the history of postwar abstraction.”
Elizabeth Osborne is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania. She has been a painting instructor at PAFA since 1963. The artist is retiring in 2011 and her tenure at PAFA will be remembered as one of the Academy’s longest and most distinguished. Osborne has exhibited extensively throughout the United States for over forty years. Her work is included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE; and McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX. Osborne has received numerous awards including the Percy M. Owens Memorial Award, a MacDowell Colony Grant, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award (American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters), and a Fulbright Fellowship.
Locks Gallery has represented Elizabeth Osborne since 1972. This marks her 9th solo exhibition at the gallery.
