About

The Connecticut native, Elizabeth Peyton, was born in 1965 and spent her adolescence drawing people. She attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City from 1984-1987. The majority of her works are small in scale and include figurative depictions of close friends, family, celebrities, and royalty.  She works in oil paint, watercolor, pencil, and etching.

She works mainly from photographs, interpreting and transferring their imagery onto canvas and paper. The compositions often depict a sitter in an intimate setting such as a private home or bedroom. Peyton’s figurative style employs gestural brush strokes that vary in intensity and transparency.

Peyton’s work is owned by many international permanent collections including the Carnegie Museum of Arts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France; Museum fur Gegenwartskunst in Basel, Switzerland; Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York; Seattle Art Museum in Seattle, Washington; Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, New York. A midcareer survey titled Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton traveled in 20018 from the New Museum in New York, New York to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, England, and Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, Netherlands.