Lizz Lopez

Lizz Lopez is a contemporary artist whose drawings and paintings return again and again to death, treated through symbol and allegory rather than gore. Her main medium is graphite, though the work in our catalogue, Body of Christ, is an oil on canvas from what she calls her Still Life Series.

Background

According to her own statements, Lopez came to drawing with experience across several fields, including photography, sculpture, classical oil painting, graphic design and design for film. Published biographical details beyond that, such as her birthplace, training and exhibition history, are not something we have been able to confirm, so we do not give them here.

Themes

Three motifs run through her work: "lady reapers," female personifications of Death; hands; and macabre still-life props. The lady reaper turns the familiar hooded skeleton into a feminine, sometimes gentle figure. Hands, in her work, are both self-portrait and symbol of touch, faith and mortality.

Body of Christ shows how these ideas meet. Her own hand, first photographed and then painted, emerges from darkness in a lace cuff, rings on its fingers and a broken rosary hanging from it. The title is the phrase spoken when the Eucharist is given, and the improvised props (fabric samples, old chain links, a vest held with a rubber band) are transformed into something courtly and devotional.

Related works

Hands have been studied as a subject since the Renaissance; compare Leonardo's Study of Hands. For more on her territory, see memento mori and vanitas and dark academia art.