Elizabeth Hall is an artist, herbalist, and educator who lives with her family in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Elizabeth holds a BA in painting and drawing from Meredith Collage and an MFA in painting from East Carolina University, with studies abroad including printmaking in Florence, classical oil painting in Paris, and multimedia work in Poland, Estonia, Russia, Belize and Guatemala. Elizabeth’s international exhibition record includes venues such as the Betty Rymer Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago; FADO Performance Art Center, Toronto; and the Internationales Waldkunst Zentrum (IWZ), Darmstadt. Elizabeth has worked as a commission artist for over two decades, specializing in portraiture for clients throughout the United States. With two decades of teaching experience, Elizabeth has served as a professor on the faculty of several institutions teaching courses in Art History, Design, Drawing, and Painting. Elizabeth currently teaches drawing in George Mason University’s School of Art.
Elizabeth’s artwork has embraced a diversity of approaches and media over the years, yet a consistent thematic thread in much of her work is the exploration of the duality of injury and healing. Elizabeth’s interest in the art of herbalism began during her graduate studies in Belize where she learned the importance of plant medicines and the urgency of protecting both the plants and the cultures that pass on the knowledge of them. In the old market of Belize City, Elizabeth met revered herbalist Barbara Fernandez, who stressed the relevance of using all of the senses to know and understand plant medicines. This insight and appeal to the senses became an inspiration for Elizabeth to study the art of herbalism and a welcomed opportunity to combine the psychological and spiritual healing power of visual art with an artform for healing the body. Elizabeth’s formal herbalism studies include Foundations of Medicinal Herbalism and Herbal Apothecary with Teresa Boardwine, RH(AHG), and The Forgotten Energetics of Traditional Western Herbalism, the Six Tissue States and Diagnostic Skills with Matthew Wood, RH(AHG).
Elizabeth and her husband co-run SporaStudios: Integrated Arts for the Earth, Body, and Mind.
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