The unique beauty of Lake Michigan’s shoreline in southeastern Wisconsin inspires digital artist Elizabeth G Fagan. It’s where the wild majesty of the Great Lakes meets gently tended farmland. Four distinct seasons create visual masterpieces. For its geographic location, Fagan calls this place Lake Michigan’s Left Coast.
To create her art, Fagan first takes photographs. With her digital camera, she takes dozens or even hundreds of shots of a subject. Back in her studio, she reviews the images to carefully select the ones that best capture the visual interest of the subject. It might be the way the sun lit a natural setting on a particular day. It might be a specific pattern or texture. It might the expression in a creature’s eyes. “With my animal portraits, I aim to spread compassion for our fellow travelers on planet Earth,” says Fagan.
With her artwork, Fagan attempts to capture the essence of a scene or subject. She often minimizes visual noise to emphasize distinctive characteristics. She says she “explores natural and familiar scenes as they might appear in memories.”
Things Fagan loves: Arts & Crafts interiors, rustic antiques, American-primitive furniture, bungalows in Chicago neighborhoods. Encountering the genius of Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park, IL she says she had an epiphany. “Everywhere I looked in Wright’s studio, everything just made sense. It was perfect design.” Though Fagan is influenced by the past, her medium is state-of-the-art digital photography.
“I call my work ‘eclectic 21st-century,'” says Fagan.
Elizabeth G Fagan is a writer and artist who resides on Lake Michigan’s shoreline in southeastern Wisconsin—a place she calls Lake Michigan’s Left Coast.
Fagan attended The Hammonasset School, a private arts high school in Connecticut, where she began writing and taking photographs. She earned a BA in English at Grinnell College (Grinnell, Iowa) and the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC). She has an MA in Linguistics with a specialization in teaching English as a second language (ESL) from UIC. Fagan later gained an associate degree in Web Development from DePaul University in Chicago.
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