Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present new work by Eliza Thomas. This will be the first exhibition for the artist with the gallery.

Eliza Thomas’ work serves as an investigation of the natural world and a response to place. This series of works on paper and paintings are portraits of the immediate environment, or moments in time therein. In 2011, Thomas started this body of work in mid-coast Maine and continued it in Pitkin County, Colorado and Austin, Texas. Regardless of the location, each work on paper was made at the edge of a body of water – ocean, creeks, rivers – and the paintings were made thereafter in the artist’s studio from photographs and memory. This series sets out to capture an aesthetic of water – it’s movement, changing color, reflectivity, and fluidity. Thomas’ compositional approached was further informed by the sound of the water that she heard. It’s trickling or rushing became crucial in determining the gestural movement of the artist’s line. With this body of work, Thomas was inspired by her first hand experience and knowledge of water as a dwindling resource, and set out to capture something of the essence of this imperiled resource in the hope of creating a greater awareness and sensitivity.

Based in Austin, Texas, Eliza Thomas received her BA in Italian from Barnard College, Columbia University, New York and has studied art at the School of Visual Arts, New York and at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado since 2003. She has exhibited nationally and her work is included in the collection of The University of Texas School of Law, Austin, Texas.

This body of work is dedicated, in loving memory, to the artist's beloved late grandmother, Gloria S. Kabacoff.