Denver-based artist Elizabeth Gauss creates large-scale abstract paintings defined by saturated color, layered mark-making, and a practice rooted in repetition, scale, and daily creation — reflecting a journey shaped by mental health and the power of creative expression.

• Elizabeth’s work has evolved from small, minimal drawings to expansive abstract paintings, with scale and color tracking her growth through recovery and healing.
• Her practice is deeply shaped by lived experience with mental health, using repetition, scale, and daily creation as a framework for resilience and sustained recovery.
• Years of classical music training inform her disciplined approach to abstraction, while her partnership with ArtLifting supports her in sharing her story and reducing stigma through her work.
• Regular visits to the Clyfford Still Museum influenced her shift toward larger, more physically present work that fully occupies space.

Elizabeth Gauss is a Denver-based painter whose large-scale abstract works are defined by saturated color, expansive gestures, and a clear sense of physical presence. Before turning fully to visual art, Gauss trained as a classical musician in a world shaped by discipline, performance, and pressure. Her studio practice now offers a counterpoint: a space for quiet, reflection, and a more sustainable creative rhythm — one that gives rather than takes.

Working in abstraction, she builds layered compositions through repetition and movement — an approach that echoes her musical background, where color and brush strokes replace notes. What began as a shift in medium has become a way of reconnecting to instinct, allowing her to move away from perfectionism and toward a more intuitive, expressive process.

Her work has evolved alongside this shift. Earlier drawings in her archive are quiet and minimal, while her current paintings push outward, building layers of color through assertive, full-bodied mark-making. This expansion reflects a deliberate commitment: to create work that fully occupies space, both visually and physically — an approach rooted in her decision to counter-apologizing for her existence through paint.

Regular visits to the Clyfford Still Museum played a key role in this evolution. Sitting with Still’s paintings — works that refuse restraint — Gauss began to reconsider her own approach to scale and visibility. That influence remains visible in her work today, where bold color fields and sweeping gestures move across the canvas with clarity and force. Her studio practice is grounded in consistency, guided by a directive she returns to often: Always Be Creating.

“It’s easy to look at my creative output and recovery and see how it gets bigger, brighter, more colorful. I love looking at that through time and seeing myself get better.”

What makes your creative process uniquely yours?

I have spent almost my entire life studying creativity, art, and expression. I spent 20 years as a classical musician before I shifted to visual art. Orchestral music is a very demanding discipline, focused on perfection within very narrow parameters. After an injury I sustained in a car accident made it impossible for me to remain competitive in that world, I began to create visual art, initially as a means to relieve built-up creative pressure. 

At first, my work was equally burdened by perfectionism. Technical still-lifes and charcoal drawings of my own injured hand dominated my output. A visit to the Clyfford Still Museum sparked something deep within me, and I began to experiment with abstraction. My creative habits and process, cultivated over my decades of musical study, enabled me to break down and practice each piece of the abstract language I was developing. 

I began, for example, by creating almost exclusively in black and white, to observe and control movement, line, and composition. I introduced color slowly and deliberately. My study of Japanese court music and European music theory combined in my mind, giving me a sense of the importance of empty space and pause on my canvas. I also create prolifically, creating art nearly every day — challenging myself to experiment, play, and explore.

One of the most important parts of my practice is a willingness to ‘do it wrong’ or ‘make bad art,’ which for me means I am consciously turning away from perfectionism, toward more free expression. In reality, I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘bad art.’ I make a lot of art I don’t show to the public, but that doesn’t mean it is bad; it is just prototypical or experimental or silly or weird. But it all ends up getting filed away as part of the creative process, and I never know what is going to unlock my next new idea.

So, I guess my answer is that I have found a middle path where discipline can coexist alongside experimentation and play, and that feels really true to who I am as a person.

What life experiences most deeply influence your work?

In 2016, I survived an incomplete suicide. I was in Istanbul, Turkey, alone and extremely weakened by my eating disorder. I can point to a singular moment when my relationship to my art and my creativity changed fundamentally. I found myself in a completely terrifying and untenable situation, and the only thing I knew how to do to survive was to draw. I clung to art to maintain my sanity throughout that experience and the aftermath, and art has been my true companion ever since. Throughout the intervening 10 years, I have used art as a vehicle for my recovery. As I have gained strength, my art has gotten physically bigger, bolder, and stronger.

Image 1: Parts of a Whole 1
Image 2: Parts of a Whole 2
Image 3: Parts of a Whole 3
Image 4: Parts of a Whole 4

How has sharing your work through ArtLifting changed your art or your life?

My illness thrives in shame. Each year that goes by since I have been with ArtLifting, I feel that shame dissipating, and I feel myself sharing more and more of my story in the hopes that my art can be an ambassador for mental health recovery. I am acutely aware that to get recovery is one thing, but to keep it is another, as I have lost many people in my life to suicide and disordered eating since my own crisis in 2016. I truly believe that my creative practice and the support of my clients through ArtLifting have been a major reason I am still here today.

What do you hope stays with someone after they experience your work?

This is such a wonderful question! I don’t often get the chance to observe people when they are interacting with my art, but I recently celebrated 10 years of survival and recovery through art with a solo exhibition. I had the amazing opportunity to talk with a large variety of people who were experiencing my art for the first time.

One of my favorite things about the discipline of abstract art is creating this language of emotion through mark-making that is uniquely my own, yet understandable. I address very difficult topics in my art: suicidality, my struggles to maintain my eating disorder, recovery in opposition to a trillion-dollar diet industry, to name a few. Yet, the language I have created in my abstraction allows me to touch these very hot issues, gently, intimately, lovingly. I do this for myself as well as any potential viewer who may also be struggling.

Over the course of the few hours of my exhibition, I received the most wonderful feedback from the public who truly understood — though I used no actual words — what the work was saying. It was beyond validating to hear my own feelings reflected back to me from total strangers while viewing my paintings.

As far as what I hope people will receive from the work as a whole, my wish is truly that the message is one of recovery and hope. I spend a lot of time with each piece trying to make sure that — even if I begin with feelings of unrest or disquiet — ultimately, the work moves toward equanimity, peace, power, or strength. I never want to leave my art or myself in my illness.

Elizabeth Gauss’s work continues to grow in scale, color, and presence, reflecting a sustained commitment to her studio practice and a clear evolution over time. Through ArtLifting, her paintings have been placed in corporate, residential, and hospitality spaces, including MetroNational | Work& Mother Suites in Houston, 25 North Lex by Greystar in White Plains, Revival on Platte in Denver, and RSM Headquarters in Chicago.

Images: Blue Marks on Canvas 1 and Blue Marks on Canvas 2 by Elizabeth hang on a wall at 25 North Lex by Greystar in White Plains. Risk Aware by Elizabeth hangs on a wall at RSM HQ in Chicago. Gallery wall at Revival on Platte in Denver featuring Canvas 2 and LOMAS 5 by Elizabeth.

These installations bring her large-scale abstractions into shared environments where they are experienced daily. As her body of work expands, so does her reach — both in the spaces her work inhabits and in the confidence embedded within each new piece.

Keep up with Elizabeth on Instagram as her practice continues to grow and evolve.