'My expanded practice is rooted within a ‘utopia of wonder’, focussing on Carl Jung’s non-gendered Feminine Archetypes, Mary Oliver’s ‘nature’ poetry, and being alive. It encompasses museological references, and often attempts to awaken peace-loving, agents-for-change in their ‘Gardens of Eden’. Feminine-centred mythologies, folklores, fairy-tales, ancient goddesses and contemporary super-heroines are all central to my work.'
Liz Crossfield is a London-based artist who explores human connections with mother nature through childhood reveries, Jungian philosophy and her imagination. She studied fashion styling and fashion writing at The London College of Fashion and later graduating with a BA in Fine Art at De Montfort University, a PGCE at the University of Westminster and received a Distinction at City and Guilds of London Art School for her MA in Fine Art. She has recently completed a year’s Off-Site Painting Programme at Turps Art School in London.
Formerly an international fashion magazine stylist, GMTV fashion correspondent and Condé Nast BRIDES Magazine editor, Crossfield only returned to her true love, painting, art history research, and art education, after having her three children. She is an art educator, having taught art to a wide range of ages in a variety of settings including BTEC Foundation Art and Adult Painters at FE College, Primary School, an independent Fine Art School, and even at a local care home. As part of her artistic enquiry into being human, alive and breathing, Crossfield is also a fully-qualified restorative yoga teacher with the British Wheel of Yoga.
Crossfield communicates a breadth of aims in her art: desiring a harmonious, egalitarian world, celebrating mother-nature’s life-giving blossoms and exploring the tender lightness of being with the weight of the world in cosmic and sometimes comic reveries. Her expanded practice is rooted within a ‘utopia of wonder’, focussing on Carl Jung’s Feminine Archetypes, as well as reparation and protection. Her work encompasses museological references and attempts to awaken peace-loving agents-for-change in their ‘Gardens of Eden’. They are a gentle call-to-arms; for these goddess super-heroines, to rise up, protect their motherland and help save humans from themselves. Feminine-centred mythologies, folklores, fairy-tales, ancient goddesses and contemporary super-heroines all inspire and inform.
Crossfield’s alchemic process is intuitive, instinctive and reflexive; the engagement between subject and materials are fundamental; works are often painted on old poetry books and floral vintage fabrics collaged and embedded within the paint. Methodologies embrace nostalgic childhood memories, inviting automatic, gestural and expressive painting in lush ‘gardens of delight’ colour. She captures and shares her heightened sensory experiences within painted ‘felt sense’ musings, conjuring up an entirely heartfelt and sensory experience that communicates human to human. Wake up, and smell the roses.
Today, Crossfield lives and works near Richmond, painting full time in her home's lofted studio. She likes to swim in the local lido, and often immerses herself in mother nature whilst walking her Goldies along the Thames Path. She writes:
“I think I’m just painting feelings. I’m mostly, currently, painting reveries from my grandad’s magical rose garden, when I was a little girl. I can smell the roses as if it were yesterday. I’m enjoying the challenge to paint those big blousy damp petals, in those sugary shades and capture the heady perfumes that scented the air in that enchanted garden.”