Liz Young

Dualistic in imagery, concept and process, Liz Young’s artwork investigates themes that evoke feelings of loss and an acknowledgement of the inevitability of nature, its beauty and decay. Young tends to make drawings and sculptural objects within thematic bodies of work creating a personal context that is empathetic, dislocated and tender. Themes are awkward juxtapositions and visual conundrums about both nature and culture, private and public and identity and landscape. Her objective is to reconstruct and imitate nature with a sophisticated naïveté, reflecting concerns about the human body and the natural world. Young uses processes as varied as traditional art practices to handicraft techniques, always showing evidence of the human hand.

She has exhibited her work in galleries and museums, nationally and in Europe. Her work has been supported by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), MOCA in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Santa Monica Museum of Art, The Luckman Center, Exit Art and Hallwalls in New York, Molndal Konsthall, Sweden, Long Beach Museum, the Skirball Center, Kappa Museum, Prague, and the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department as well as commercial galleries including Western Project, Andrew Shire, Deep River and POST. Young has received local, state and national grant awards from City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs, California Arts Council, a Surdna Fellowship, Art Matters and J. Paul Getty Fellowship. She has participated in residencies at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, the Headlands Center for the Art, the MacDowell Art Colony and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Her works are in many private and public collections including LACMA, Lef Foundation, Greve Foundation, and the Norton Family Foundation. She has been teaching sculpture, art history and digital arts at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts since 2004.