For over 25 years, I’ve worked across sewing, painting, and performance to give tactile physical form to my personal experience of place. I currently make painted textile constructions that combine rough sewing and loose color-field painting into oddly shaped works that are not quite paintings and not quite anything else. The activity of cutting and sewing and reworking releases the work from the obligations of being a picture and allows me to improvise as I experiment in collaboration with the materials. I am not mastering painting on canvas, I am working with color and paint and fabric to see what we can do together, and to get to places that I hadn’t anticipated.
In every moment of looking at my surroundings, there is more than I can convey in words or images. These things aren’t outside of language because they’re sublime or mystical – they’re just casually indescribable sensations. This ineffable quality of the mundane is the reason I make art. In all the work I’ve made, I’ve highlighted the actions I perform with my materials as a way to express this truth about the experience of living or moving or being in a specific place.
Before the painting and sewing, there’s a process of walking through and looking at and drawing the space around me. I make landscape and observational sketches almost daily. These sketches aren’t studies for specific works, and it would probably be hard for an observer to see the connection between my sketchbooks and my textile constructions. But they play an important role in how I absorb and physically understand a place.
Education
1998 MFA, California Institute of the Arts
1994 Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program
1993 BA, Brown University
Solo exhibitions
2015 Drifters, Galerie Gris, Hudson, NY
2013 Paintings and Works on Paper, Galerie Gris, Hudson, NY
2010 Floating Island, John Tevis, Paris, France
2007 Window/Wall, The Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ
2006 Windows & Bars, LMAKprojects, Brooklyn, NY
2004 The Satin Subway Grate Rubbings, Five Myles, Brooklyn, NY
Two Person exhibitions
2024 (November) Lizzie Scott and Barbara Weissberger, Catskill Art Space, Livingston Manor, NY
2024 Architecture of Layers: Yifat Gat and Lizzie Scott, Haggerty Gallery at Dallas University, Dallas, TX
2024 Keiko Naharashi and Lizzie Scott, Klaus von Nichtssagend, NYC
2022 Mimi Chen Ting and Lizzie Scott, Norte Maar, Brooklyn, NY
2016 Marina Adams and Lizzie Scott, Galerie Gris at Salon Zürcher, Zürcher Studio, NYC
2015 Drifters, Neveruses: Josh Blackwell and Lizzie Scott, Songs for Presidents, Queens, NY
2015 Ordinary Things: Shirley Irons and Lizzie Scott, Heskin Contemporary, NYC
2014 On the Verge: Lizzie Scott & Patricia Satterlee, Crossing Art, Queens, NY
2002 Silkies: Matt Connors and Lizzie Scott, Hot Coco Lab, Los Angeles, CA
2001 Josh Blackwell; Lizzie Scott, PS 122 Gallery, NYC
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 Ghosts and Flowers, _BARBARA_, Ghent, Belgium
2025 Prickly Abstractions, Affective Care, NYC (curator)
2025 Text|Textile, Broodthaers Society of America, NYC
2024 Folds, Project ARTspace, NYC
2022 X’S Four, Galerie Gris, Hudson, NY
2021 Downtown 2021, LaMama Galleria, NYC
2019 Languages of the Heart, John Molloy, NYC
2018 Emoji Show, Klaus Von Nichtssagend, NYC
2017 Soft Power, Leslie Heller, NYC
2017 We Need to Talk, outside, North Adams, MA
2017 Domestic Disturbances, 490 Atlantic, Brooklyn, NY
2017 Driven to Abstraction, Susan Eley Fine Art, NYC
2015 Handmade Abstract, BRIC House, Brooklyn, NY
2014 Color, Shape and Form II, Galerie Gris, Hudson, NY
2014 The Last Brucennial, Bruno Schnabel, NYC
2014 Genesis Forward Battery, Underdonk, Ridgewood, NY
2013 Page 179, Artforum, September 2013, Brennan and Griffin, NYC
2011 Underemployed, Zurcher Studio, NYC
2011 30: A Brooklyn Salon, Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2008 Beyond Drawing: Constructed Realities, Ohio University Art Gallery, Athens, OH
2006 Ragged, Kate MacGarry, London, England
2005 Anthology der Kunst, ZKM, Karlsruhe, GDR
2004 Open House: Working in Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
2004 Yarns, Solomon Fine Art, Seattle, WA
2003 Pilgrimage, Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, NY
2002 Social Space, Cuchi Fritos, NYC
2002 Love Shack, Metaphor Contemporary Art, Brooklyn, NY
2001 Cities and Desire, Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2001 Artists’ Writing Reading Room, Side Street Projects, Los Angeles, CA
1999 Artists in the Marketplace, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY
1998 Six Emerging Artists, Dan Bernier, Los Angeles, CA
1998 Blinded By the Light, The Bradbury Building, Los Angeles, CA
Selected Performances
2017 Total Styrene: Fool for Love, Songs for Presidents, Ridgewood, NY
2017 Counterpointe5, Collaboration with Ursula Verduzco, Norte Maar, Brooklyn, NY
2016 Runaways, VAPA Center, Bennington College, Bennington, VT
2016 Drifters, Safe Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2015 Total Styrene: True Believer, Songs for Presidents, Queens, NY
2012 Total Styrene: A Gauche Louche, Zurcher Studio, NYC
2012 Styrene Lounge, Dumbo Arts Festival, Brooklyn, NY
2012 Total Styrene: Breakdown, Klaus Von Nichtssagend, NYC
2012 Styrene Lounge, Art in Odd Places Festival, NYC
2012 Totally Total Styrene, The Art School Project, Queens, NY
2011 Floating Island, John Tevis Gallery, Art Paris, Paris, FR
2009 Happening Sur L’Herbe, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY
2009 The Styrene Fantastic, Movement Research Spring Festival 09, Rachel Uffner, NYC
2007 East River Stairway Parade, DAC Art Under The Bridge Festival, Brooklyn, NY
2006 Windows and Bars Walk, LMAKprojects, Brooklyn, NY
2003-4 Satin Subway Grate Rubbings, Sidewalks throughout New York, NYC
1998 Travelogues, Sidewalks in NYC, Los Angeles, Boston
Selected Bibliography
2019 Kara Schocken Aborn, Artist Profile: Lizzie Scott, C# Christie’s Education Modern and Contemporary Art Magazine, September 2019
2016 David Cohen, Armory Week Pick of the Day: Marina Adams and Lizzie Scott, Artcritical, March 1, 2016
2012 Sara Roffino, Dumbo Arts Festival, Art Info, September 28, 2012 (illustration)
2012 AIOP Transforms 14th Street, Street Art NYC, October 7, 2012 (illustration)
2012 Total Styrene Breakdown, TimeOut New York, August 10, 2012 (illustration)
2012 Rozalia Jovanovic 8 Things to do in the New York Art World, GalleristNY, August 7, 2012 (illustration)
2012 Whitney Kimball The Measure L Magazine, August 6, 2012
2010 Robert J. Hughes, Lizzie Scott, ArtSlant Paris, November 8, 2010
2009 Claudia La Rocco, The Styrene Fantastic, The New York Times, September 18, 2009
2009 Claudia La Rocco, Song and Dance Diary, Artforum, May 3, 2009 (illustration)
2008 Jennie Klein, Lizzie Scott, Beyond Drawing: Constructed Realities, Ohio University Art Gallery, 2008
2004 Charlotta Kotik, Open House: Working in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum of Art,
2004 (illustration)
2004 Today in New York, Artist uses Sidewalk as Canvas NBC Television, May 17, 2004
2003 Randy Kennedy, She Sees Art, And You’re Walking On It, The New York Times, October 14, 2003 (Illustration)
2003 Ken Ehrlich, Brandon Labelle, and Steven Vitiello, editors, Surface Tension: Problematics of Site, Errant Bodies Press, 2003 (illustration)
2002 Holland Cotter, Where Witty Meets Gritty, The New York Times,
November 15, 2002
2002 Cuchi Fritos Time Out New York, November 7–14, 2002
2001 Holland Cotter, Lizzie Scott and Josh Blackwell, The New York Times,
May 11, 2001
1999 Martha Schwendener, Artist in The Marketplace, Time Out New York,
August 26–September 2, 1999
1999 Holland Cotter, Artist in The Marketplace, The New York Times, Friday,
July 23, 1999
1999 Marisol Nieves, and Lydia Yee Artist in The Marketplace 19th Annual Exhibition Catalogue, Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1999 (illustration)
1998 Six Emerging Artists The LA Weekly, June 19–25, 1998
Awards, Grants, and Residencies
2011-2016 NYFA Fiscally Supported Artist
2010 BRIC Arts Media Fellowship
2002 The MacDowell Colony
1997 Friends of CalArts Fellowship
1993 Minnie Helen Hicks Fine Arts Prize
Selected Collections
Museum of Modern Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art
The RISD Museum
Auberge Resorts Collection
J. Crew Corporate Collection
Represented in Dallas-Fort Worth Metro Area by GUT Gallery