Painter Elizabeth Stewart
Solo Exhibit at Elysium Arts to Launch New Business and Website

Emerging Seacoast painter Elizabeth Stewart will be featured in a solo exhibit titled “It’s Raining Cats and Dogs” during the month of March at the Elysium Arts Folk Club, in the Lower Mill at Salmon Falls in Rollinsford. The opening is free and open to the public on Sunday, March 1, from 4 to 7 p.m., and will also offer Celtic music and song by the artist. The gallery is open by appointment and for three additional concerts by local musicians throughout the month.

The exhibit coincides with the launch of Stewart’s new business, Elizabeth Stewart Art, and its accompanying website, www.elizabethstewartart.com.

Specializing in traditional Celtic designs, Elizabeth Stewart Art steps off with an unveiling of the artist’s series of pet portraits: whimsical portraits of people and their pets, integrating Celtic spirals, knots, and mazes to create a stylized texture and symbolic context for each painting. The series has been shown in solo and group shows around the region, and is now available both in greetings card collections and giclee prints online.

In her pet series that treats animals as diverse as dogs, cats and rabbits, “Cecil’s Locusts” is one installment that embodies the layered stories Stewart crafts with her brush. Setting about to paint a friend’s dog named Cecil, Stewart learned that the mischievous Springer Spaniel had been trained as a hunting dog, only to ignore all birds in favor of a trail of locusts on his first hunt. The painting in verdant greens and rich blues renders a testy quail biting on Cecil’s tail while he nonetheless pursues his own prey of choice. Surrounding the scene with a frame of Celtic knots, the painting harkens back to traditional Celtic designs of dogs and birds entwined in decorative art.

“Celtic designists of old who crafted the now famous illuminated manuscripts drew their inspiration from the beauty of the world around them and the activities of their time,” Stewart explains. “Honoring nature and our relationship with it by celebrating even its everyday moments is a rewarding and meditative endeavor that hopefully brings joy and inspiration to those who look at it. That’s very sacred to me, and I also love honoring the humor in life,” she says.

Other painted series of Stewart’s include “Human Trees” and “Work in Progress,” an exploration of ordinary but unique moments during various types of work. These series also incorporate Celtic designs and principles, and are available for sale as greeting cards and giclee prints through the Elizabeth Stewart Art website.

Born of English, Scottish, Mic Mac, Abenaki and other unknown bloodlines, the self-taught painter weaves many ancestries into her work, and is drawn primarily to ancient Celtic traditions of art, music and dance. She views Celtic design as no less than a visual language. Drawing from such revered sources as The Book of Kells and other ancient Irish and Scottish artifacts, she explains, “I am honored to be part of the evolution of this tradition. … The way these designs happen is very hypnotic. Hopefully people will find it soothing and also invigorating at the same time.”

Among other honors, Stewart’s paintings have won the “Alpha Dog Award” at the 2006 “Who Let the Dogs Out?” show at Heartwood College in Kennebunk, Maine; “Honorable Mention” in the Omer T. Lassonde Juried Competition at the Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery in Portsmouth, NH; and “Most Original” in the Maine Women in the Arts’ 2006 Fine Art Competition in Kennebunk, Maine.

More information on the artist is available at www.elizabethstewartart.com. Details about the opening of “It’s Raining Cats and Dogs” at the Elysium Arts Folk Club in Rollinsford can be found at www.elysiumarts.com/folkclub, or (603) 743-4700.

A Pet Portrait usually begins with a reference photo, which I use to create a very stylized drawing,

using my own Celtic Design visual language to tell the story of a moment.

Colors are layered thinly at first,

and built up gradually to achieve depth and balance.