Gratitude for nature’s beauty motivates abstract artist

“Parallel passions.”

That’s what Liz Wilkinson calls her 25 years as a Acton-Carlisle High School Spanish teacher and her current work as an abstract artist. 

Wilkinson, who retired from CCHS in 2018, is showing her paintings at Trinity Episcopal Church’s gallery through June 28. 

“I had always been a representational artist, but I increasingly simplified and abstracted images,” says Wilkinson. 

She uses acrylic paint, preferring a water-based medium because “I love how I can manipulate it.” Her paintings, often rendered in deep blues, greens, golds, and rusts, suggest the natural landscapes that inspire her.  

Typically, in her paintings, “there’s some form of horizontal line, which gives me, and the viewer, a point of reference,” says the artist, who lives in Lincoln.

The natural world is a reliable muse, Wilkinson notes, particularly in “how it shifts with the weather, seasons, and even just the time of day.” As an avid walker and road biker, she is outdoors most days, and the Lincoln/Acton area often informs her work. 

Her favorite subjects, she says, “are open spaces: fields, water, and sky.”

Dual interests

Wilkinson, who grew up in Wellesley, recalls making “lots of doll clothes and puppets with paper mâché heads.” She began painting in middle school, and by high school, she had created a portfolio and was the president of her school’s art honor society. 

Over the years, Wilkinson’s dual interests have intersected. She took art history courses in undergraduate and graduate school as part of her Spanish studies and carried on her pursuit of art in continuing education courses. 

One of her greatest pleasures was teaching students about art from the Spanish-speaking world and taking them on school trips to museums in Spain and Latin America. 

When she retired from teaching, Wilkinson was able to paint full time and “move my practice forward,” she says. Devoting her time to art “was a way to exercise another part of myself.” 

A ‘creative collaboration’

The Acton Art Association has been a “key resource” for Wilkinson, who for several years took Martha Wakefield’s color theory courses and later her master class. She says Kathy DeFlice-Secor, also at CAA, “has been instrumental in my pivot from representational to abstract painting.”

While she was teaching at CCHS, Wilkinson met fellow faculty member Michael Goodwin. They reconnected a few years ago when Goodwin, who has a band that bears his name, was producing his second album. He commissioned Wilkinson to design the album cover and his marketing materials. 

She is now working on the cover for Goodwin’s third album. “It’s been an exciting creative collaboration, especially since his music is fabulous and is often closely connected to the natural world,” just as her painting is, Wilkinson says.

Whether it is designing an album cover or finding her muse in the mountains and lakes of New Hampshire or the fields and rivers of home, Wilkinson says her work “is an expression of gratitude for being surrounded by such beauty.” 

An exhibit of Wilkinson’s work runs through June 28 at the Trinity Gallery, Trinity Episcopal Church, 81 Elm Street. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Thursday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.