Elizabeth Gregory-Gruen — Mixed Media

Elizabeth Gregory-Gruen’s Cut Work, is a free hand paper cutting process that charts the contours of our ever-changing emotional experience through the movement of form, line, color, and light and shadow. The elements of the composition speak to the implications of patterning, shape and arrangement of life.

Cut Work travels through Gregory-Gruen’s diverse vocabulary of mediums from paper and metal, to leather and 12-gauge gunshot blasts allowing the exploration of visceral emotional response and meditative rest.

Using scalpel-cut multilayered imagery, the dimensional layers make space for shadows to fall and move in an unhurried vibration. Imperfection becomes perfection. There are no guides, rules, drawings or plans in the process. The image is determined in the top layer of the image. An adhesive is added under the top layer followed by another layer of paper, which is cut—the process continues, creating the multiple inward layers. Cut Work imagery opens the imagination through contemplative reflection allowing the mind to vacate the strife of daily life.

Elizabeth grew up in Chicago as a third generation artist. She went on to graduate Parsons School of Design 1985 and worked as a fashion designer for 25 years for several well known US companies. In 2000 she returned to her artwork to further her exploration into the human psyche through her Cut Work process. She began exhibiting in 2008 culminating in a retrospective show in 2019 “Cut Work 2008-2019” at Howl Gallery in NYC.