Elizabeth A. Lopez was raised on the Mexican American working-class side in San Antonio, Texas.

An area with its own particular hybrid culture of Spanglish, vato culture, and often morbid folk religion and fervent Mexican American Catholicism, this daughter of a Southern Baptist Conservative minister grew up with would be criminals, drug dealers and a curious religious upbringing.

Influenced by her early environment, the work of Lizz Lopez touches on issues relating to iconography, technology, and the struggle between reverent ideals and modern life.

Her background has led her from working as a registered nurse, to web and graphic design for the "industry", and returning full circle to nursing for an intensive care unit. Her paintings have evolved from the mid-90s in creating self portraits and portraits of her partners crucified to a more recent exploration of urban legend and religious satire.

Reminiscent but removed from the rituals of Catholicism, the intrigue of the piety of saintly images took on new meaning. This outsider perspective gave her a distance to examine the importance of the ritual itself.

The repetition and reiteration of each member as part of a group coupled with the inclusion of drama and spectacle are different from her faith yet incorporated into her own style of painting.

There is a gentle and compelling repulsiveness present in the illustrative and visceral quality of the figures.

The plasticine statues are created to glow with an almost mocking truthfulness. The impeccable technique and obsessively painstaking treatment which the artist utilizes inoculates the work with a serene meditative quality and complete devotion to the work itself.

A unique inversion happens in Lopez’s work. Instead of the faithful internalization and personalization of parables of devotion and sacrifice by saints illustrated in glass, marble and oil, there is an outward expression of the personal through recreation of new icons and manipulation in religion’s native language of realism.

This vivid authenticity visualized through bleeding Christ figures has long been language of Catholic faith and a direct reflection of the fatalistic Mexican attitude Lopez grew up with.

Friends, lovers and acquaintances become iconic characters in her paintings, creating new icons and iconography. Parables not from the Bible, but from her life, reconstructed in the language of religion and South Texas culture with all the intensity of a biblical mystery.

Elizabeth Lopez
Email: sinlizzy@earthlink.com
Website: www.minideluxe.com