Bangkok based artist Elizabeth Romhild returns to her native Denmark for her much anticipated 10th anniversary exhibition at Ebeltoft Kunst Forening. Self-taught Danish-Armenian artist Elizabeth presents her most recent series of oil canvases alongside haunting new sculptures.
Spending her childhood in Iran, with her adult years spent in Saudi Arabia, America, Indonesia, and nearly the last two decades in her adoptive home of Thailand, Elizabeth’s unique heritage and worldly experiences instil her creativity with distinct individuality. In Dawn, Elizabeth has awoken to a new artistic era in her career.
Always searching for fresh artistic directions, Elizabeth recently embarked upon an investigative journey into to the expansive wild savannahs of Africa. During her explorations, she was profoundly affected by the primordial majesty of both the bestial inhabitants and the nomadic tribe’s folk.
Returning to her Bangkok studio, Elizabeth’s African adventure pushed her to re-examine the process and technical methodology of her previous creative output. The result has been a remarkable transformation and a new level of maturity for the artist.
Invoking ancient civilisations closer to her adopted Asia, several of Elizabeth’s latest artworks imbue the historic monumentality of the towering Buddha statues of Thailand’s lost kingdoms or the carved stone busts in Cambodia’s ruined palaces. Intimate and penetrative in their singular proximity, the timeless, totemic quality of the solitary tribesmen in Trance, Warrior, and Enigma, are akin to the introspective, majestic sandstone portraits of Ankor Wat’s 12th century ruler King Jayavarman VII.
Perhaps it’s the sculptural quality of her most recent paintings that have driven Elizabeth to expand her artistic sensibility and create her first three-dimensional works. Further enhancing the sense of physicality and earthiness of her African imagery, her haunting sculptural manifestations of bestial skulls and horns remind viewers of the harsh cyclical nature of survival and to our own fragile mortality.
