"In Her Own Words": 

Landscape claims its place as my sole

painting subject simply because it is

what I know best. Over the years,

the idea of “poetic landscape” as a

gentle reminder of the importance of

tranquility has become not only an

exciting challenge but an intriguing

obsession. By dismissing the rare and

the specific, poetic landscape

embraces common natural elements

that are familiar to all people. I

believe that its strength comes from

what is left unexpressed; then the

viewer can look beyond the painted

scene and feel the powerful sense of

the place itself.

 

The pastels of Elizabeth Mowry, longtime

PSA Master Pastelist, have received over

40 major landscape awards in national and

international exhibitions. Early in her painting

career, Key Bank Corporation purchased her series

of 36 large pastels chronicling the Hudson River,

and then commissioned her to do large pastel collages

in each of thirteen states where the corporation

had a significant presence. Today her paintings are

in numerous corporate and private collections. In

addition to her recognition by PSA, she has been

named a Distinguished Pastelist of the Pastel

Society of the West Coast, and American Guest of

Honor of Art of Pastel in France.

Mowry is the author of four books: “Paint the

Seasons in Pastel,” “The Pastelist’s Year,” “The

Poetic Landscape,” and “Landscape

Meditations.” She taught pastel painting

classes for 15 years at New York State’s prestigious

Woodstock School of Art and has taught

numerous master pastel workshops in the U.S.

and abroad. In 1999, she was invited to give a

presentation about “poetic landscape” at the

“Second International Conference on Art

Culture Nature” at the University of

Washington, in Seattle. She is listed in Who’s

Who in American Art.

Recently relocated to Colorado, Mowry

now seriously pursues her own painting and

writing, both of which explore a personal theme,

which she refers to as “Surveys of Solitude.”

Linking her current pursuit to long-held feelings,

she explains: “The idea of creating

arrangements of natural landscape components

on the painting surface to convey an elusive

human state of being such as solitude, yet

without any actual evidence of humans, has

been lingering restlessly in my thoughts for

some time. As an only child who spent a great

deal of time alone in nature, I was exceedingly

comfortable with solitude and silence even then.

Now, for whatever reason, it has become important

to me that my future paintings parallel

those same qualities of life that I dearly cherish.”