About the Artist
Elizabeth Castellano graduated with a BFA and an MAT from Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York. Her B.F.A., received in May 1999, is in studio art with an emphasis on painting and a minor in art history. During her undergraduate studies, Ms. Castellano took a leave of absence to study art abroad at Lancaster University in Lancaster, England. During that time, she studied painting, printmaking, and photography. Prior to her study abroad experience, Ms. Castellano had the opportunity to travel to Florence, Italy, to complete intensive coursework towards her art history minor.
Ms. Castellano completed her M.A.T. in art education in January of 2000. Her student teaching was completed at the Mount Pleasant Central School District and the Pocantico Hills School District. For both her undergraduate and graduate studies she graduated Summa Cum Laude. She received her B.F.A. with Art Department Honors.
Ms. Castellano has been a part of many solo and group shows locally, nationally, and internationally. Her artwork is in both private and public collections. Public collections include Herkimer County Community College, Manhattanville College Office of Admissions, and the President’s Collection, President’s Office at Manhattanville College.
Previously, Elizabeth has taught art education. She taught a variety of projects to her students that made connections across the curriculum, including literacy based art activities, and incorporating the elements of art and art historical context. Projects included site specific sculpture, still life, figure drawing, self-portraits, ceramics, and a variety of master artist studies.
Elizabeth has prior experience as an adjunct professor in the education departments at Manhattanville College and Mercy College.
Currently Elizabeth Castellano offers private art lessons. When Elizabeth is not teaching, she can be found painting in her studio.
Artist's Statement
The artwork that I create comes about through my desire to live my life with a sense of integrity. My art attempts to speak the truth about my perceptions as it empowers my aesthetic voice. It also addresses my sense of skepticism, while it investigates the injustices I perceive in the world around me.
My artwork provides me with an escape to solace in my dreams, while it helps in my search for a greater understanding and sense of resolve. As a result of my aesthetic investigation, my artwork acts as a chronology of experiences that have become a significant part of who I am.
My acrylic paintings are based on experiences that have helped to shape my moral conduct, since of values, and my sense of responsibility. During the early stages of my paintings, it is as though I am at the bottom of a ladder. I begin by covering the canvas with a surface composed of gestured brush strokes, sometimes even applying different mediums. This becomes the base coat of the overall hues that I wish to show through the finished painting.
In addition, I work to develop the themes of my paintings through bold line, rich color, and abstract subject matter. I balance the methodologies, or signs in art, and the emotions, or impressions in art in order to convey my ideas to the viewer. While creating the composition of the painting, I work from both photographs and/or nature that symbolize the question I wish to pose.
Through my acrylic paintings, I examine perceived experiences that are my deepest, freshest wounds, and my greatest struggles. I dissect these wounds, which have become the basis of my personal memories and my human existence. I am inspired to create as a result of conflict in realms such as religion, mortality, family, education, society, relationships, human rights, all of which push and pull at my system of beliefs. Issues such as these create daily artistic epiphanies, which bring me one step closer to both discovering and understanding the condition of society and my place in that society as a visually impaired artist.
While working to resolve issues relevant to my identity, I find comfort and serenity in the process of creating and expressing both my anxieties and my dreams. The things that I find difficult putting into words are most easily expressed in my paintings. Therefore painting helps me gain a sense of freedom. It makes me a stronger person in a diverse and global world.
My small watercolor pieces depict a variety of compositions. These include details of larger acrylic paintings, small studies of the human figure, studies of flowers, and abstracted landscape. The smaller works have come about because I wish to explore the medium of watercolor and how it relates to other mediums. I also wish to investigate a variety of subject matter that I am exposed to in everyday life.
The photographs and drawings that I once used as references has become pieces of work within themselves. Like the watercolors, digital photography and drawing have become other tools that I use to study themes relevant to my acrylic paintings. These studies have become finished pieces on their own.
I work to create a bridge leading to the understanding of experiences that I communicate through my aesthetic inspiration.
Ms. Castellano completed her M.A.T. in art education in January of 2000. Her student teaching was completed at the Mount Pleasant Central School District and the Pocantico Hills School District. For both her undergraduate and graduate studies she graduated Summa Cum Laude. She received her B.F.A. with Art Department Honors.
Ms. Castellano has been a part of many solo and group shows locally, nationally, and internationally. Her artwork is in both private and public collections. Public collections include Herkimer County Community College, Manhattanville College Office of Admissions, and the President’s Collection, President’s Office at Manhattanville College.
Previously, Elizabeth has taught art education. She taught a variety of projects to her students that made connections across the curriculum, including literacy based art activities, and incorporating the elements of art and art historical context. Projects included site specific sculpture, still life, figure drawing, self-portraits, ceramics, and a variety of master artist studies.
Elizabeth has prior experience as an adjunct professor in the education departments at Manhattanville College and Mercy College.
Currently Elizabeth Castellano offers private art lessons. When Elizabeth is not teaching, she can be found painting in her studio.
Artist's Statement
The artwork that I create comes about through my desire to live my life with a sense of integrity. My art attempts to speak the truth about my perceptions as it empowers my aesthetic voice. It also addresses my sense of skepticism, while it investigates the injustices I perceive in the world around me.
My artwork provides me with an escape to solace in my dreams, while it helps in my search for a greater understanding and sense of resolve. As a result of my aesthetic investigation, my artwork acts as a chronology of experiences that have become a significant part of who I am.
My acrylic paintings are based on experiences that have helped to shape my moral conduct, since of values, and my sense of responsibility. During the early stages of my paintings, it is as though I am at the bottom of a ladder. I begin by covering the canvas with a surface composed of gestured brush strokes, sometimes even applying different mediums. This becomes the base coat of the overall hues that I wish to show through the finished painting.
In addition, I work to develop the themes of my paintings through bold line, rich color, and abstract subject matter. I balance the methodologies, or signs in art, and the emotions, or impressions in art in order to convey my ideas to the viewer. While creating the composition of the painting, I work from both photographs and/or nature that symbolize the question I wish to pose.
Through my acrylic paintings, I examine perceived experiences that are my deepest, freshest wounds, and my greatest struggles. I dissect these wounds, which have become the basis of my personal memories and my human existence. I am inspired to create as a result of conflict in realms such as religion, mortality, family, education, society, relationships, human rights, all of which push and pull at my system of beliefs. Issues such as these create daily artistic epiphanies, which bring me one step closer to both discovering and understanding the condition of society and my place in that society as a visually impaired artist.
While working to resolve issues relevant to my identity, I find comfort and serenity in the process of creating and expressing both my anxieties and my dreams. The things that I find difficult putting into words are most easily expressed in my paintings. Therefore painting helps me gain a sense of freedom. It makes me a stronger person in a diverse and global world.
My small watercolor pieces depict a variety of compositions. These include details of larger acrylic paintings, small studies of the human figure, studies of flowers, and abstracted landscape. The smaller works have come about because I wish to explore the medium of watercolor and how it relates to other mediums. I also wish to investigate a variety of subject matter that I am exposed to in everyday life.
The photographs and drawings that I once used as references has become pieces of work within themselves. Like the watercolors, digital photography and drawing have become other tools that I use to study themes relevant to my acrylic paintings. These studies have become finished pieces on their own.
I work to create a bridge leading to the understanding of experiences that I communicate through my aesthetic inspiration.