"When I was first creating art, art supplies were precious to me. Being of limited financial means, I hoarded the few canvases I had for the most special moments and made most of my work on scraps of inexpensive paper and cardboard. Even as I began to feel more stable financially, I clung to these simple materials for their tactile qualities and texture, only very slowly moving from cardboard to masonite and then eventually to canvas. While I've begun to find beauty and freedom in my even larger works on canvas, I have always felt my earlier materials calling me back. Cardboard is a humble material. Easily accessible and available, and difficult to store and preserve, works on cardboard and craft paper feel more beautiful for their impermanence. Recently, I have felt the call to bring cardboard and corrugated textures back into my art making; on my mind has been the quantity of cardboard boxes that I personally generate through my online shopping habits, and how I could repurpose the waste that creates. Like many people with mental illness, online shopping has been a valuable tool in my recovery. Specifically the ability to order clothes online and try them on in the privacy of my home has greatly reduced my anxiety about going to stores and dealing with sizes and fitting rooms. So, I found myself with a pile of cardboard that I couldn’t help but see as an opportunity. My body of work, Transformation and Transmutation, is a unified series exploring my recovery story through art, incorporating marks drawn from studying my past work and reinterpreting the images through the lens of who I am today. It is presented on cardboard craft paper, handmade from boxes I received at my house as the result of purchases made online. The title of the series refers to both my own recovery and the transformation of the materials themselves as I took them through the process. Transformation: The cardboard is transforming into paper, as I have transformed through my recovery process. Transmutation: As I am breaking down the paper with my hands and my tools, I am visualizing changing the energy around me with the mantra: ‘Let [the energy] flow to, me and through me’ transmuting it from darkness to light, garbage into art. Common themes in my work are moments of pause, spaces of silence and emptiness. 'Places of Rest' refer to these themes while directly drawing inspiration from my 'Pause' series."

- Elizabeth Gauss

Prints are produced on demand on stretched canvas, acrylic plexi, or giclee fine art paper in a variety of sizes here in the United States.

Contact ArtLifting for larger size options.