Elizabeth Bourne is a fine art figurative artist based in Brighton, East Sussex. She completed an art foundation degree at Central Saint Martins college of Art and Design and a degree in Fine Art Painting at City and Guilds Art School in Kennington, London. After extensive travel she has been living in Brighton for 13 years. She currently works from a studio in her home after being part of an artists cooperative studio space for 5 years.

 

Elizabeth explores the inexorably complicated human condition through expressive portraiture and figurative work. Her figures are often nudes to represent a person in their purest and most unadulterated form. Pen and ink drawings are often a prequel to larger more vividly coloured oil on canvas paintings. Her pen drawings adopt the centuries old cross-hatching technique used by the great masters. Pen, ink and watercolour are used in combination to add a splash of colour to monochromatic cross-hatching. Her oil paintings use bold brushstrokes and a colourful palette, being intensionally conspicuous emphasising the power and drama of emotion and sexuality.

 

Elizabeth's work explores the innate eroticism of human nature. These bold pieces intend to deliberately challenge stereotypes of women's sexual identity within society. The work is intended to be observed from a women's perspective and reinforce behaviours that are more commonly attributed to men. Do men and women's needs differ so much? The spectator could be misled into believing the artists intention is to support the 'Male Gaze', however, the intention is to not objectify the female form but to explore and express the themes of love, desire, lust, fulfilment and frustration. The bold colour unashamedly invites the observer to confront these themes unabashed and with confidence. The subjects erotically dynamic poses are expressively exaggerated to depict the women in the throws of passion or the depths of despair. Elizabeth intends to bring to the forefront a sexual liberation of feelings which society represses through the shaping of human behaviour.