Eliz’sGallery

Elizabeth McKoy is a painter, mixed-media artist, teaching artist, and the founder of Artaluma. Her visual work is colorful, textural, and full of movement, with inspiration drawn from rhythm, music, and the natural world. She moves between abstract expression and realistic work rather than treating either as a fixed destination. What matters most is staying responsive to the work as it develops.

That responsiveness is visible in her layered process. A painting may change direction many times before it feels complete, and some finished pieces have ten or more earlier paintings beneath the surface. Marks are covered, uncovered, revised, and allowed to remain when they add energy or depth. The final image carries a record of those decisions: not a perfectly straight path, but an accumulation of looking, experimenting, and beginning again.

Elizabeth’s path as an artist has also been self-directed. When formal art-school training did not give her the kind of creative experience she needed, she began building a more joyful and exploratory practice of her own. Later, training with the Lincoln Center Institute in New York deepened her interest in aesthetic education—an approach centered on inquiry, discovery, and artistic ideas rather than rigid step-by-step instruction.

Her studio practice and teaching practice continually inform one another. The questions that arise at the easel become useful ways into a class: how to work through frustration, when to follow an unexpected turn, how to develop skills without losing curiosity, and how to recognize a personal visual voice. At Artaluma, she shares tools and techniques with adults ranging from curious beginners to experienced artists, including through the year-round Artist’s Footstep series.

The works above offer a first view into that creative life in motion. This collection will continue to grow as more paintings and mixed-media pieces are photographed and added.