Elizabeth Caffey is a fine art painter from California, America who specializes in oil paintings. She prefers to work on canvas, the texture of which adds to the overall effect of her paintings. The classic feel of oil paint on canvas is a perfect accompaniment to Caffey’s classic gradients and tones. Many of her female subjects appear antiquated too, wearing fashion that were popular in the Elizabethan and Edwardian eras. Elizabeth Caffey’s paintings are a form of pop surrealism, a modern form of surrealist art that often has a cartoon feel. Pop surrealists are influenced by modern media such as cartoons, movies and music videos.
Caffey’s painted women are caricatures who faces are based on human faces but have had some features exaggerated to add to the emotive nature of the portrait. Caricaturists often use exaggeration techniques to create humorous drawings or paintings, but in Caffey’s art these techniques are used to create non-humorous emotions like pity, loneliness or sadness. With their large, watery eyes, the majority of Elizabeth Caffey’s paintings convey a silent sadness, a moment of self-reflection caught on canvas. Some of the women in the paintings appear almost unreadable, with large, vacant eyes that stare out at the viewer in a guarded fashion, seeming to expect something of the viewer, instead of trying to convey something to the viewer.
You can buy art prints of Elizabeth Caffey’s paintings through her Etsy shop, or you can visit her on Facebook.
