Elizabeth Peyton

(American, born 1965)

Elizabeth Peyton is a contemporary American painter best known for her intimate, small-scale portraits of celebrities, friends, and historical figures. Characterized by transparent washes of pigment and a jewel-tone palette, Peyton’s works address notions of idolatry and obsession. “A painting of a person can be descriptive, but for me it's about all the things that make up a picture—the feelings, the brushstrokes—more than describing somebody,” she has said. Notable figures she has painted include Kurt Cobain, Barack Obama, and David Bowie. Born in 1965 in Danbury, CT, Peyton went on to study at the School of Visual Arts. In 1993, she held a solo show of drawings in room 828 of the historic Chelsea Hotel, launching her career in the art world. By her second solo exhibition in 1995 at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, she had achieved widespread acclaim, and has since held major exhibitions at the New Museum in New York, the Royal Academy in London, and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, among others. For her interest in portraiture, her work has been compared to Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as to other contemporary figurative painters such as John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage. She lives and works in New York, NY.