How long have you been an artist? 

10 years professionally

Who/what are your biggest influences? 

Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, Willem DeKooning

Briefly describe your process for creating a work of art. 

I always start with a few layers of washes, this helps me to let go of any expectations I have so far and just enjoy the process of watching colors start to interact with each other. I keep working layers with additional tools, like oil pastels and pencils to get a contrast of lines to texture, and then let the piece guide me to where it wants to go!

What do you listen to when you work, if anything? 

I listen to a lot of different types of music! Anything from Lizzo, to reggae, to bluegrass, and cumbia.

When do you know a piece is finished? 

I always let a piece sit for a few days at least when I think it's finished before I varnish it and call it official. If I can be satisfied with it each time I look at it over those days, then I know it’s done. If there is still something unsettling about it, I will work on it more.

How has the current shelter-in-place order affected your work? 

The overall tone and uncertainty has left me with less creativity to output the past month, but for the most part I am a stay-at-home worker, so I am lucky able to do my normal painting practice even with everything going on.

AND JUST FOR FUN…

What’s your favorite color? 

Mustard yellow

What's your favorite song? 

impossible to say

What’s your favorite movie? 

Anna Karinina

Who is your favorite author? 

Hemingway, James Frey, any fictional WWII story

Where are you going to travel when we safely can? 

MEXICO!

Elisa Gomez received her BFA with an emphasis in painting from the University of Utah in 2010 and currently lives in Breckenridge, CO. She has been involved in multiple shows all over the US and has completed multiple public and private murals. Publications include Luxe Interior+Design Magazine and Lonny Magazine and Architectural Digest.

Working primarily in mixed media on canvas, Gomez wields her materials with the skill of a practiced fine artist while nonetheless composing her canvases with the ease of a studied art historian. Evidenced by a few discernible, well-executed, and discrete operations, her working mode transposes the schema and aesthetic of both European and American Abstract Expressionism with a studied sensitivity particular to her training and practice. Gomez demonstrates a playful attention to color, texture, and surface. Palette and visual movement between, amongst, and across forms figure heavily into her pieces. In style as well as composition, Gomez’s work is replete with recurrent aesthetic maneuvers and peppered with extensive variation and experimentation. Her canvases continue to surprise and delight the viewer in their transposition of elements across genres and movements. 

Gomez is also an accomplished mural artist, having created three murals recently in Denver, Austin, and Houston, and participating in Fort Collins’s Pianos About Town Project.