Twenty Years Apart!

Elizabeth Osborne  "Figure in Studio"  1967  Collection of the Artist

Elizabeth Osborne (b. 1936) is a contemporary artist based in Philadelphia, PA.  She studied at the the University of Pennsylvania and also at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her talent was recognized at an early stage, and she received numerous awards while in school, and a Fulbright Fellowship in 1964. She began teaching at PAFA in the early 60's becoming one of the few women instructors at that time. An influential and beloved teacher, she only recently retired from full-time teaching and was awarded the 2013 Distinguished Alumni Award from the Alumni Association of PAFA. I myself was one of Liz's students, and very gratefully so, and it was a real thrill for me as the current president of PAFA's Alumni Association Council to have the honor of actually giving the award to Liz!

Elizabeth Osborne  "The Studio"  1987  Private Collection 

Liz Osborne's beautiful work ranges from representational to abstract, and also explores the space inbetween these two states, but whatever the genre her paintings are known always for their clear and subtle use of color as well as an imitable and characteristic balance and elegance. Curator Robert Cozzolino has written of her work, "Osborne may be known to some for her virtuoso, glowing realist watercolors of the late 1970s or monumental, hallucinatory landscapes of the early and mid-1970s; still others may know her recent boldly-painted ruminations of nature in its micro- and macrocosm.  Yet Osborne's oeuvre is full of surprises, stylistically experimental yet cohesive, hauntingly introspective and complex in its artistic and personal associations."

 The artist shows at Locks Gallery in Philadelphia and is in numerous private and public collections, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Delaware Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her website can be seen here.