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Elizabeth Torak is one of the foremost figurative painters of the day. The past decade has seen tremendous flowering of her output, abilities, and recognition. In 2005 she completed a 6’ x 7’ figure piece titled “The Beat Goes On” (now in a private collection) along with its companion piece, “The Maenads”. The development of these works was chronicled in an article in the September 2005 issue of American Artist Magazine. The recipient of numerous awards, she is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the world.
Torak’s paintings encompass a broad range of subject matter, from still life to landscape, from intimate images of contemporary life to large scale figure compositions with mythological reach. “More than anything else, I want my paintings to be alive, to breathe new life and new energy into the air that surrounds them. My constant subject, the subject beneath the surface picture of objects and people, is the flow of life itself: the life force that is present everywhere, even in what is called ‘still’ life.”
Elizabeth started oil painting at the age of 13 and has been painting professionally since she was 27. Trained at the Art Students League, her technique is the result of thirty-five years of training, practice, and experimentation. “Although I have been painting for thirty-five years, full time for the past twenty-five, painting always seems new, fresh, and exciting to me. I literally feel that I learn something every time I pick up a brush. Oil paint is such an extraordinary medium that I constantly discover within it new possibilities for expression. This enables my technique to evolve and develop even as my artistic vision deepens.”
Some factors in her work, however, do not change. Elizabeth continues to believe that the quality of her work depends on the quality of the materials she uses. She prepares Belgian linen with rabbit-skin glue and white lead, in the manner of the old masters and uses dry pigment mixed with cold pressed linseed oil for color. She also prepares her own mediums including Maroger medium. “There is a famous quote from De Mayerne that goes ‘The ground is of the utmost importance’.” De Mayerne was a doctor, an amateur painter, and a close friend of Peter Paul Rubens. “I remember reading that quote as an art student and I just could not believe it – how could the ground, which is a term for the painting surface, be important at all, let alone of ‘the utmost’ importance? I was only concerned with what I put on the ground: my thoughts and feelings. Now I realize that none of those thoughts and feelings can be heard or felt without the proper ground. I like to make the analogy that painting on a well-prepared ground is like playing a great instrument like a Stradivarius. No matter how good you are, you will always sound better and play better on a superior instrument.”
Tilting at Windmills Gallery has been the exclusive gallery for the work of Elizabeth Torak since 1997.
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