ABOUT

Statement
My work centers on painted portraits of women layered onto lace and repurposed domestic textiles. These materials function as both surface and metaphor—simultaneously revealing and obscuring the figure beneath. The lace curtain, with its associations of privacy, decoration, and traditionally feminized labor, becomes a structural and symbolic veil.

Text is integrated through stenciled language that hovers over or fractures the painted image. Influenced by my background in graphic design, I use typography as a visual and psychological counterpoint to the figure—suggesting the tension between internal narrative and outward projection.

By merging painting, historically aligned with masculine tradition, and textile processes long coded as feminine, I create hybrid works that resist hierarchy and destabilize expectations about medium, value, and voice.

Bio
Elizabeth Coffey works with oil paint and lace fabric to examine the tension between visibility and concealment within female identity. Trained in graphic design (BFA, Virginia Commonwealth University), she brings a refined sensitivity to color, composition, and text.

She completed a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and received first place in the Radius 250 Biennial. Recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition at IA&A at Hillyer (Washington, DC); juried presentations in the Mid-Atlantic New Painting Biennial and ArtFields; and additional venues including the Chautauqua Institution and 1708 Gallery’s InLight. Upcoming exhibitions include a two-person show at The Athenaeum (Alexandria, VA). Coffey is based in Richmond, Virginia.