Locks Gallery will open its fall season with an exhibition of landscapes and interiors by the well-known Philadelphia painter Elizabeth Osborne. Osborne is a prominent teacher and has shown extensively in Philadelphia and around the country. Her first solo exhibition with the Locks Gallery was twenty-seven years ago. Osborne also has a long relationship with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she was a student and has been an instructor since 1961. She was third woman to be hired as a teacher by the Academy, making her a pioneer and mentor to a generation of Philadelphia artists.
These new works include several of Osborne's abstracted, almost calligraphic,landscapes. Osborne is a sophisticated colorist and these scenes are rendered in vivid and evocative hues. Mountains, water, and the sky are portrayed using large-scale strokes made up of bands of colors. The landscapes almost become pure abstractions, but there is always a sense of the light and color of an actual place. The paintings depict islands off the coast of Maine and the Sleahead area of Ireland.
Bands of color are also repeated in Osborne's new interior paintings. They appear in one painting as a stack of books, in another as a piece of fabric, and in a third as a Minimalist painting hanging on the wall. Other paintings appear in these interiors, including Osborne's own landscapes, allowing Osborne to play with many modes of representation in one piece. A flower is painted with every detail shown, but is set in a vase rendered with one masterly brushstroke. Osborne's wit and virtuoistic ability are visible in these beautiful and distinctive paintings.
Born in Philadelphia, Osborne attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she was the recipient of several prestigious fellowships, including a Fulbright. Osborne continued her studies at the University of Pennsylvania where she received her M.F.A. She returned to P.A.F.A. in 1961 as an instructor and continues to teach there today.
Her work is in many prestigious public and private collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; the Pennsylvania State Museum; the Delaware Art Museum; the Marian Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; Bryn Mawr College; and Woodmere Art Museum.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue.
