Elizabeth Greisman was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1954. Her family lives in the centre of Toronto, as they have for four generations. Elizabeth’s work as a painter is influenced by her experiences as a dancer, landscape designer and educator.
Elizabeth shares her art with children through Inner City Angels and Montcrest School. She is the Director of the “Artist Cooperative of Canada,” an inter-disciplinary group of three artists.
Elizabeth is also Director of "The Art Science Collective of Canada".
Education — After receiving her diploma in Dance at the Laban School of Dance in London, England (1977), Elizabeth completed degrees in Visual Arts and Education at York University in Toronto, Canada (1978) and a diploma in Landscape Architecture at Ryerson University, Toronto (1989). Summer courses at Central St. Martins School in England (2001; 2002) started her notation of the movements of dancers.
Summer residencies — include the Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Ireland), the Banff Centre (Canada), the Pouch Cove Foundation, Newfoundland, (Canada) and the Vermont Studio Center, (U.S.A.). Elizabeth returned to Ireland in 2010 to participate in the Cill Rialaig Project and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre Artist Residencies. In 2011 Elizabeth participated in a residency in Paris, France at the Irish College there.
Elizabeth also participated in a winter residency at Fundascion Valparaiso (Spain).
Current Work — Elizabeth has begun a series of paintings that considers the landscape, architectural interior, the portrait and dancers in costume in both Canada and Ireland. In 2010, Elizabeth developed this series while participating in Residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Co. Monaghan, Ireland the Cill Rialaig project in Co. Kerry, Ireland. Elizabeth documented this landscape and contrasted it with the work she is currently doing on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, Canada. Portraits of dancers in costume from the National Ballet of Canada and the Cois Ceim dancers in Ireland are included in this series. Elizabeth developed a way of painting the portraits of the other artists in residence in a gestural style, using paint on paper. The system of capturing the portrait is this: the portraiture session lasts for two hours, and Elizabeth then keeps one portrait and the artist / model keeps another.
The Portraiture series began initially while in residence at the Banff Centre in 2001. This work was seminal to the large-scale paintings from nature / interior that she developed for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2009 at the Spadina Museum in Toronto. Elizabeth was invited to show selected works from her residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in 2008/2009 at the Canadian Embassy in Dublin in August 2009. As well, she was featured in the Strategic Plan of The Tyrone Guthrie Centre. In the same year, Elizabeth formed the Artist Cooperative of Canada, composed of four artists in the fields of painting, installation work and sculpture. Elizabeth brought samples of the Cooperative’s work to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and included the work of many international artists (that she met on other residencies) for informal studio showings in 2008-2010. Elizabeth opened her studio during each residency period and displayed her featured artists to artists of all disciplines that are supported there. The practice of introducing the work of her fellow artists promotes the prospect of multi-cultural artistic collaboration to an international audience. In 2010 Elizabeth included writers, performance artists and poets with the visual artists in her studio show at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. In Paris Elizabeth began a new inquiry into healing plants at the Jardin des Plantes and Jardin des Luxembourg while in residence at the Irish College.
Elizabeth intends to continue her experimental work on large figurative banners, as well as panoramic style canvases, as a structured visual recording in oil paint of historic decorative furnishings (of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and the Spadina Museum), the costumed dance form, portraits of residents, and Canadian and international landscape. Through her work, Elizabeth strives to produce an evocative document of the spirit of the landscape and its inhabitants. The theatricality of the costumed dance figure is a development from painting the dance figure in motion and was inspired by the portraits of the actors from the Stratford Festival found at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. (Sir Tyrone Guthrie was one of the first directors of our Stratford festival.)
She has been a guest Visual Artist at the Cois Ceim Dance Co., Ireland, The National Ballet of Canada, The National Ballet School, The Toronto Dance Theatre, The Esmeralda Enrique Spanish Dance Company and The Burklyn Ballet in Vermont.
Art education and outreach — Teaching Visual Arts to the young child has been a life long passion for Elizabeth for over 30 years. She has created a primary-level curriculum in the areas of drawing and painting, ceramics and sculpture, rich with art history and cross-disciplinary references to science, math and language arts. For over a decade, Elizabeth teaches at Montcrest School in Toronto. Elizabeth also works with the Inner City Angels in Toronto to create murals and fabric works, linking visual arts, sustainability and the history of Toronto. Dr. Ariella Damelin, PHD (Ontario Studies in Education, University of Toronto) wrote an article on the importance of arts education featuring Elizabeth’s teaching strategies.
Inter-professional collaboration — Elizabeth is the director of the recently formed “Artist Cooperative of Canada” with three other artists who work in painting, sculpture, and installation art. They were featured at Scotiabank Nuit Blanche at Spadina Museum, 2008, ”The Sounds of Shadows.” They returned to Scotiabank Nuit Blanche in 2009 to present "Wild” at Spadina Museum. Upcoming in October 2010 for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche is a multidisciplinary show at Spadina Museum, entitled “Under the Surface.” Several new artists (a women’s sound collective, a doctor, a sculptor and a digital artist) have been added to the show to expand the parameters of the experience.
She has worked in tandem with many disciplines, including a show with poet Andrea Jarmai called “Woman in Armour“, and a series for HIV education at the Banff Centre in the Science and Communications programme with Dr. Wendy Wobeser.
Elizabeth Greisman, lead artist
