LIZ GOLDBERG

  As a painter, graphic artist, and animator I have been inspired by puppets and absurdist theatre.  Although my images are often drawn from life, they are influenced by puppet–like characters reminiscent of Alfred Jarry’s forerunner of absurdist theater, Ubu-Roi, the buffoons of modernist playwright Michel de Ghelderode, the existentialist mime plays of Samuel Beckett, and the symbolist and political figures of European puppet theater. As a point of departure, there is a degree of abstraction in a puppet. I find this to be a freeing force, giving me considerable license to explore colorist and gestural solutions to the depiction of contradictions these images embody: awkward yet fluid, wooden yet alive, constrained yet brashly extroverted personalities, often mischievous, egotistical, erotic, even magical exaggerations of human behavior.

I have developed some of these “diva” and puppet-inspired works into experimental animated films requiring thousands of drawings. My animations have usually been in collaboration with filmmaker Warren Bass. They have been broadcast on American Public Television and cable, and have received awards and juried recognition in over 20 countries. They use animation as an analog to painting, dance and poetry, and are intended to re-define the paradigm of what an animation can be into a painterly art form.. The process of animation has, in turn, influenced my full scale paintings and works-on-paper producing diptychs, triptychs, and serial prints with progressive deviations.

On a formal level, I think of myself as a colorist who is interested in the interaction between color, line and gesture and in the complex and suggestive depiction of interior character and personality through graphic means.

In the fashion world: 2018: produced “Vogueing and Other Pleasures” with film maker Warren Bass,, which was shown at the Film Festival at the Barnes in conjunction with the Musee de Paris, director Terry Fox. In 2018, the film was also shown ” Contexualizing Fashion”, at Pratt. A full room instalation, was created at Joan Shepp where she was a resident artist for 3 years 2017- 2020, installing the entire room with 1,750 hand-drawn cells from the animation, as well as paintings and prints.

Liz has taught Fashion Illustration at Pratt and Drexel University for the past 16 years.