Today we’d like to introduce you to Elizabeth Ranger.

Hi Elizabeth, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.

I suppose I’ve always been drawing. I’m a super shy, imaginative type, and never quite felt at home in the real world. I’m still not 100% sure how to function in it! So drawing has always been a really reliable refuge for me, and an almost spiritual home.

I drew loads as a kid, then gratefully went to an arts high school, and then got a BFA in Montreal, getting oil paint all over my apartment in the process. And I tried, I really did, to find illustration work after school. But I hadn’t really gotten an illustrator’s education, if that makes sense, and I needed to pay rent, so… I spent six years pointing my obsession brain at pastry and dessert. It was ok, but it never blossomed into a calling.

Then in 2016, in the midst of the maternity leave of my first child, on a whim I took part in an Inktober challenge, and it was all over. I couldn’t go back to kitchens, I’d found home again! I was super rusty / maybe my skills weren’t that great to begin with back then? But I drew. Every day. Every moment. I made so many bad drawings. I say this with fondness, you have to make bad ones…

Since then I’ve just been adding goals to the list and crossing them off. Each year trying something new, something that scares me a little bit, and then doing it and reassessing. I guess the financial side of things started to make sense a couple years ago, and I’ve been proud of finding a place in my local art community. Maybe proudest of finding my voice, visually, though. The making a living part is fun and gratifying, but the best part has been slowly adding the collection of works that I can feel good about.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?

It definitely hasn’t always been smooth. I think looking back, there haven’t been many (or any) big problems along the way; the biggest thing to overcome has been my own moods relating to the problems. If I’m feeling overwhelmed or anxious, it’s been imperative to find some support for that, or to find kindness for myself and take a break without feeling guilty. As an artist it’s really easy to try to find ways to work constantly. That’s sometimes great, like, I love getting obsessed over things, and some of my best ideas happen during those days when I can’t stop turning an interesting problem over and over in my mind. I could visualize a whole show’s worth of painting during an afternoon, if I pointed my mind in that direction. But sometimes, it gets to be way way too much. And it’s hard to set it down at times. But really important too.

Besides that, I hate keeping track of finances. It stresses me out! And never feeling like I have enough time in the day (or maybe organizational skill), to feel ahead of all the projects I’m trying to do. Not a terrible problem, and I know it’s just because I keep trying to do more!

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?

I work primarily in watercolours, sometimes gouache too. It’s funny, even when I painted in oils, I used to paint so thinly, and stop at the halfway point, where you can still see with bones and the board beneath. I think I love the way the path of the artist is there to study, and the way the pigments are so stubborn and unerringly themselves. Each paint has a super distinct personality, and I’m so down with that.

So what I do that is distinct… well, I guess at this point I have a style. I used to pore over those old illustrations of fairy stories and also strange symbolist paintings, and I think I’ve got a bit of that feeling in my work. I used to worry my art wasn’t ‘dark enough’, but somehow it always come through, people tell me. It’s what I want! I’ve always had a bit of a gothic taste, but also I like pretty and ethereal.

I’m always putting loads of detail into things, too. Thankfully these days I’m starting to use more ‘implied detail’, like swishes of things that look complicated but aren’t. Saves me time and looks better, but for me, it always has to have that look of little spots of sharpness and and twinkle.

Oh and animals.. animals in clothes apparently, is so much fun to paint, and seems to go over well. Woodland anything with twee little gloves.

Who else deserves credit in your story?

I’ve been so lucky, to have so many people in my life who have cheered me on with this pursuit. People have always told me to go for it, but I think I partly wondered if the supports would disappear if I truly went for it (they didn’t). My partner has done the lion’s share of the support, both financial and emotional, and he’s always been my most vocal cheerleader. It boggles me a bit, but I’m so glad.

Adriana Afford of Argyle Gallery in Halifax was there early on, beckoning me to share more art in her gallery. Her warmth and critical advice has been invaluable and I feel more like a real artist for having her lift me inside the fold.

Marina Smith organizes many many art markets here, and she accepted my very first application to sell at a little Wiccan market a couple years ago. I was so green! But that weekend was wildly good and I’ve been grateful for her as a connection ever since.

There are specific artists, especially on Instagram, that have touched my heart with their art and sometimes with their words and messages. Artists I could look at and think ‘they’re like me. There’s a place for me in this world’. I would feel embarrassed to mention them by name, but there are so so many.

Friends I’ve met at art shows, people who have simply come by to say a kind a word. There’s something irreplaceable about those sorts of connections. When you have your soul up there in colour for anyone to see, it’s very reassuring that it can draw people in, especially as someone who is not so comfortable being vulnerable usually.

My kids, for although they seem to require a big chunk of my time and my energy, the pure rocket fuel they give back is more essential to the whole thing than I’ll probably ever know. They get involved more all the time; my son is my own studio photographer and my daughter an artist in her own right.

Pricing:

• Archival Prints – 8$ – 55$
• Canvas Earrings – 15$
• Stickers – 5$
• Handmade Mixed Media Journals – 18$
• Commissions – 80$+

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.elizabethrangerart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethranger.art/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Elizabethrangerart
• Other: https://linktr.ee/elizabethrangerart

Image Credits

Malcolm MacDonald