Elizabeth Colomba

Born and raised in France, on the outskirts of Paris, amid the rich inspiring Caribbean heritage of her family, Elizabeth Colomba's life as an artist began in early childhood: "I was six years old when I initially told my mother, I will be a painter… She petted me on the head, and insinuated I either have to win the lottery or be Picasso… As I was contemplating my two choices, 2 years went by… The school I was in, wanted to do something special for father's day, and decided we will be copying a master's work of our choice, as a gift for this significant circumstance. My Van Gogh counterfeit made my parents ecstatic, and asserted me on what I wanted to be."

Colomba attended the high school of art in Paris. After receiving her degree in applied arts, she continued her studies, still painting and intensively developing her own style. Upon graduating from college, she achieved a first class honors degree, and most importantly, a mastery of an individual style and artistic expression. In the late nineties, after trying out her skills in the world of advertising, she moved to Los Angeles, to pursue a career in painting and storyboarding, working on feature films like Romeo and Juliet, One hour photo, Jesse James, A Single Man and many more.

Colomba's paintings are charged with iconology. The content and countenance of her work are intentionally classical, but yet their participants are not. By revisiting the classics of the Flemish school, while introducing within the picture, portrays of black female or male characters, she achieves a collision between tradition and modernity. Representing mythical figures as black, or in "scene de genre", allows her to address an inspirational universal message where she requests the viewers to look beyond the genetic indicators of race. The heirs of the African diaspora find a prestigious, illustrious, poised and dignifying imagery in my work, a portrayal that crosses racial lines.

Artists such as Picasso or Braque knew how to integrate black art into the Occidental world. She integrates black people into Western art.

When asked who her artistic heroes are, Elizabeth Colomba eloquently replies, "I'd like to have Sargent's touch, Caravaggio's light, Degas' vision, Vermeer's inscrutability and Velázquez's knowledge". The influence of each can be seen in Elizabeth Colomba's work.

For Elizabeth Colomba, painting is primal. She can't think of living without doing it. To say it in other words, she lives to paint. The roots of her artistic expression are cerebral: Leonardo da Vinci was right, 'Painting is a mental act.'