Landed began with a simple experiment: hanging a lace painting outdoors and watching it come alive. What started as curiosity about “women’s work” during a residency grew into an ongoing practice of placing paintings in unexpected settings, where their presence—and the environments around them—are both transformed.

The exhibition traces movement from constraint to freedom. Coffey presents large-scale female faces painted in oil on repurposed lace curtains, exploring the tension between the seen and unseen layers of female identity. As her process evolved, she expanded painting beyond the rigidity of the stretched canvas: lace panels drape over painted surfaces, pieces hang freely, and irregular edges echo the fabric’s motifs.

Photographs of paintings placed outdoors are part of the installation, documenting process and fleeting moments of encounter, and suggesting that meaning can shift depending on where—and how—a work is seen.

Elizabeth Coffey works primarily with oil paint, lace fabric, and canvas to explore the tension between the seen and unseen, and its relevance to female identity. Her background in graphic design infuses her work with a strong sense of color, composition, and typographic sensibility.

She received her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2022, she was awarded a residency to The Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, FL), and received first place in the Radius 250 Biennial (Richmond, VA). In 2024, she was juried into the Torpedo Factory Art Center (Alexandria, VA) as a studio artist. Recent juried exhibitions include the Mid-Atlantic New Painting Biennial (Fredericksburg, VA) and Artfields (Lake City, SC). Her work has also been shown at the Chautauqua Institution (Chautauqua, NY) and 1708 Gallery’s InLight exhibition (Richmond, VA).

My painting practice centers on portraying women, delving into the interplay between what we reveal and what remains concealed. The sewing and needlework from my childhood in rural Virginia instilled a lasting fascination with materials, leading me to incorporate repurposed domestic fabrics into my work. Painting on lace curtains, with their inherent associations of domesticity and traditional female creativity, feels particularly resonant. These fabrics serve not only as my painting surface but also as potent symbols of the veils we use to navigate societal expectations.

Language has always been important to me, and my background in graphic design influences how I use text in my paintings. Stenciled words juxtaposed with carefully rendered faces emphasize the disconnect between what we project outwardly and the hidden narratives we carry within. I want to give voice to the unspoken complexities of the female experience through this interplay of text and portraiture.

Historically, painting has been a male-dominated field, while crafts like sewing and needlework were often relegated to women and undervalued. My work strives to merge these historically separate realms into a hybrid form that honors and elevates both.