Liz West’s art revolves around light and color, creating engaging installations that have an ethereal quality to them. “I think we need to be taken out of the ordinary and put into the extraordinary,” she relayed in an interview with Nulty+. “I’m not professing here that my work is extraordinary but it is about giving people an experience that they might not have day-to-day.”
Indeed, her vivid environments mix luminous color and radiant light, provoking a heightened sensory awareness in the viewer. According to West, our understanding of color can only be realized through the presence of light. And so, by playing and adjusting the color, she brings out the intensity and composition of her spatial arrangements.
“My most vivid memories of childhood are based on light and color, not necessarily together but sometimes,” she recalled. “These experiences would be in a car, my dad driving through Barnsley town center, which at the time was lit with incandescent and neon lights. The light was much warmer then, an enticing glow.”
“I was always very perceptive, even as a child, and I would pay attention to the reflections on the floor, particularly on the wet floor so common in the north of England,” added the British artist. “I found it really alluring. I have a lot of memories of being driven about places and being in transit.”
Her work is best experienced in person, but you can also catch glimpses of it on West’s designated Instagram page.
