This small survey of watercolors by the renowned painter, Elizabeth Osborne acknowledges her lifelong focus and devotion to the medium. For an artist that has long worked alternatively in either watercolor or oil on canvas, the subtleties of watercolor on paper has been an immensely vibrant tool in her studio practice. Osborne’s definitive handling of color and light—strengths she has developed from the watercolor medium has often been remarked upon by curators and critics.
Osborne has frequently painted outdoors and most often with watercolor—some of her beloved locations are Manchester by the Sea, coastal Maine and the southwest. At different points of her long career, the artist has chosen to work exclusively on watercolor for a period of time in the studio. The resulting still lives and landscapes became defining images for the artist as they were translated to large canvas works.
Osborne was the subject of two recent museum surveys—Veils of Color, a traveling exhibited organized by the Michener Art Museum and Elizabeth Osborne: The Sixties at the Delaware Art Museum. Osborne has exhibited extensively throughout the United States. Her work is included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Artists, Philadelphia, PA; The James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA; and the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE. 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), a Fulbright Fellowship, with which she traveled to Paris in 1963. She was trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia where she was a faculty member from 1963-2015.
