Elizabeth Hoffman

Elizabeth Hoffman is a painter living and working in Beacon, New York. She was born in Brooklyn into a family of creativity and full of musicians, artists and writers. On occasion, she sat at the dinner table with Luciano Pavoarotti, Bob Dylan, Roberta Flack, Dizzy Gillespie, Eubie Blake, and Cyndi Lauper, to name a few. It was in this atmosphere that Elizabeth started moving in the world of art, music and dance. Elizabeth started studying classical piano and composition at the age of two with iriam Gideon, a prolific composer from Juilliard. Elizabeth shared a special bond with her grandfather, a classical violinist, with whom she composed for violin and piano, until his death.

As a young child, Elizabeth loved art and painting, but her conventional art classes suppressed her artistic interest. Instead, she found alternative creative paths. She studied contemporary dance, and at the age of sixteen she was hired to dance in a WNET television special, “Bach and Roll” with the Blues Project. Elizabeth studied acting with Uta Hagen and Sandy Dennis at the renowned HB Studio. She performed in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” at New York City Center, and was in the summer stock cast of Jerry Bock’s, ”The Apple Tree” at The Gateway Playhouse, in Bellport, NY.

It was with all her creative exploration that Elizabeth grew a deep desire to understand her creative and human nature. She desired to understand what it means to live fully and to die, the final passage of life. She went on to graduate studies in early childhood education, psychology, thanatology, trauma, grief, hospice and post-graduate psychoanalytic/psychotherapy training. Her research studies of children and death, and suicide ideation were published in “Death Studies” a national Death Education and Counseling journal. As a member of the Association for Death Education and Counseling, she chaired the Homicide and Suicide Research Group. When the World Trade Center Towers were hit, Elizabeth was hired as a trauma therapist for a mobile crises team serving survivors, and families. She was hired by Catholic Charities as a trauma therapist for the NYFD and NYPD. When American Airlines Flight 11 was hijacked and crashed in a residential area of Queens during the September 11 attacks, Elizabeth counseled terrorized children in their surrounding homes on site. In 2003, she went on to be a hospital and homecare hospice therapist, as she built a private psychoanalytic practice in Greenwich Village working predoinently with artists, musicians, opera singers, dancers, choreographers and actors.

It was with no surprise that in 2019, Elizabeth felt a deep calling to enter her own space of creativity where the deep poeticism of her life began to pour and move through her. She moved out of the city, and created an industrial chic home and art studio in a 200 year old factory building sitting on the Fishkill Creek in Beacon, NY. She took many walks in nature where she saw the world come alive and found a parallel of how she moved through nature in her own paintings. It is here where she began a journey of her own expression and broke open that space she had buried and protected for so many years. After a lifetime of living and holding others in their creativity, and a life of studying of what it means to be human, she felt her inner calling for her own artwork to start coming through her hands and being seen by her eyes.

On one of her walks, she crossed paths with an artist who became an instrumental mentor who helped guide Elizabeth into the space that she knew was hers. The work has been flowing, and inspiring in it’s poeticism and in it’s dialogue with her, and it is pouring out from years of a life of living and into a state of allowing. From a full life of creativity, Elizabeth is now allowing all her experiences to pour out into her work, which is so passionately alive. It is from here that she is happy to present her work to the world. A lifetime of work, truly.

Artist Statement

My art studio opened in 2021, after the pandemic lockdown. My work has been received by the Hudson Valley community with great interest and enthusiasm. My work is abstractly autobiographical, and authentically honest.

The paintings range in size and scale. The colors are very meaningful. The work sits between the representation and abstraction where everything comes alive. There are so many parallels to the freedom I felt when I was young that is coming out in my work. My paintings are full of saturated color and linearity. Some artists that I have looked at are; Matisse, because of his colors, Paul Klee, because of his poeticism, Peter Doig, for his abstraction and representation, Arshile Gorky for his color and hierarchy, and Pablo Picasso who was a free spirit, constantly seeking and renewing himself.

CV

Open Studio, Beacon New York, 2027

The Yard, Beacon New York 2023