In nature, light creates the color. In art, color creates the light.” – Hans Hofmann

This contemporary artist is a fresh artistic spirit in the art world, counting several vivid projects that cover an array of inspiring concepts. Throughout her carrier the artist has created some of the most impressive mosaic installations, depicting a striking abstruse style.

A Glasgow School of Art graduate, Liz is a talented visual and environmental designer whose work has been featured in exhibitions nationally and internationally. West has been recently shortlisted for several awards including Aesthetica Art Prize and Light Art Project of the Year at the Lighting Design Awards.

Recent Exhibitions:

• Autumn Lights, Little Moreton Hall, National Trust, Cheshire, UK Forthcoming
• Solstice Ritual, Penarth Pier Pavilion, Penarth (Cardiff), UK Forthcoming
• Our Colour Reflection, 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthrope, UK Forthcoming
• Zenith Blue + Primary Red, ARCADECARDIFF, Cardiff, UK
• The Light Room – Your Colour Perception, The Willis Museum, Basingstoke, UK
• Colour Collect, Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre, Bury, UK
• Coloured Interval, Ordsall Hall, Salford, UK
• Through, &model, Leeds, UK
• Your Colour Perception, Federation House, Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces, Manchester, UK

Liz is always alert for future imaginative challenges, and together with her photographer associate Hannah Devereux, they document her mosaic journey allowing us to admire the work.

Meet Liz West and have a look at her recent masterpiece in the former St John’s Church building:

Liz West creates vivid environments that mix luminous color and radiant light. Working across a variety of mediums, West aims to provoke a heightened sensory awareness in the viewer through her works. She is interested in exploring how sensory phenomena can invoke psychological and physical responses that tap into our own deeply entrenched relationships to color.

West’s investigation into the relationship between color and light is often realized through an engagement between mediums and given site. Within physical and architectural space, West uses light as a material that radiates outside of its boundaries and containers. She playfully refracts light through using translucent, transparent or reflective materials, directing the flow of artificial and natural light.

“Our understanding of color can only be realized through the presence of light.” By playing and adjusting color, West brings out the intensity and composition of her spatial arrangements.

Our Color Reflection

Installation (mirror, acrylic tubing) | 1100cm (L) 20cm x (H) x 1100cm (W) | 2016

Our Color Reflection is an ambitious new work by Liz West presented at 20-21 Visual Arts Center, North Lincolnshire from 14 May until 25 June 2016.

According to West, Color Reflection creates a conversation between the viewer and the setting.

This installation is made using more than 700 mirrors made of colored acrylic. There are 15 colors in all and the mirrors with diameters of 30, 40, 50 and 60 cm, set at different heights so that they both reflect the roof space of the old nave, revealing parts of the architecture that would otherwise be invisible, and project color up into the historic interior.

There is an element of performance to this thoughtful project, that puts the audience to the fore.

Viewers will each have their own perspectives and their own experiences tempered by movement through time and space. By going unplugged, West emphasizes that while artificial light can be manipulated it can only, at best, replicate the dynamism, shifting mood and changes in quality embodied in natural light.

Since the opening of the exhibition the artist has overhead visitors comment on the work.

To some visitors it felt like the stained glass had fallen out of the windows and onto the floor, shimmering in the sunlight. The work changes constantly depending on the rate of energy coming from the sun.

When the dusk comes down and the shadows play, the gallery spotlights reflect off the colored mirrors and send vivid dots of color up into the interior of the former church, illuminating the Neo-Gothic architecture.

Liz West is truly a magnificent artist, whose creative nature is driving her to persist on creating some of the most glorious mosaic projects that adorn exterior spaces. All of her installations are defined by divinity and ultimate creativity -and that miscellany cannot go wrong, can it?

Artist Potrfolio: Liz West

Photographs by Hannah Devereux

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