Elizabeth LEe Parkinson
Biography
Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Parkinson was born in Jerome, Idaho in 1987 and grew up in the towns of Pocatello, Idaho and Blackfoot, Idaho. She grew up with a love for all animals. She had numerous childhood pets including birds, fish, lots of reptiles, the usual dogs and cats, and horses and mules! Her parents were wildlife biologist and avid outdoors people who prioritized family time spent camping, canoeing, hunting, fishing, backpacking, and simply exploring nature.
From a young age Lizzie drew and painted animals—often from her parents old college text books. Drawing was always in her life as a much loved pass-time even when she went to college herself to study marine biology earning her undergraduate degree in 2009 from Western Washington University. In 2016 Lizzie attended Boise State University and received a second undergraduate degree in Fine Arts with an Illustration Emphasis.
Lizzie worked in fisheries biology for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game for over a decade. In 2024, she left fish genetics work to pursue her paintings and artwork full time.
She currently lives in Boise, Idaho with her young family; still deeply fascinated by wild animals, still deeply in love with wild environments and the wonder and beauty they hold.
Artist Statement
I see my paintings as a form of collecting and curating. I’ve always been a bit of a “treasure” hoarder. As a little girl, I arranged my special nicknacks across the top of my dresser in a very meticulous way. The “treasures” might be small animal figurines of pewter or ceramic, or shells, or eye-catching little stones, or maybe a shed snake skin I had woven through furniture spindles, translucent, grey, and papery to the touch.
Many of these objects I collected while on a walk through some wild landscape: a dry pine forrest in July, a bank of the Snake River, a rainy beach in the Pacific Northwest, an endless stretch of sage-green desert. I wanted to bring back home with me something reminiscent of the joy and curiosity that I felt in those wild environments. But also I think, I collected the objects for their inherent beauty—I wanted that lovely thing in my possession.
The history of collecting specimens from nature and imbuing them with value has a long history. Museums and universities house tens of thousands of plant, animal, and fossil specimens stored in cabinets for scientific purpose. Specimens are then sometimes put on display in artful arrangements and curated groupings to tell specific stories about a place or history. Naturalist’s watercolor sketches, used to describe species in exquisite detail for identification and taxonomy, also hang on the walls of art museums. Cabinets of curiosities are the perhaps the most extreme instance of people’s desire to collect and posses the wonders of the natural world and put them on artful display. I see my paintings as functioning in a similar way. Through conventional artistic composition and language, my art becomes a way for me to describe, distillate and re-order the chaotic and complex ecosystems that I have experienced. I am also aware that my art is my attempt to make nature—this beautiful ‘other’ that I cannot really posses at all—into something I can.
Today, when I paint, I conjure for myself the feeling of awe I got from actually physically being in nature, or from physically holding a trout and observing each tiny scale. I know my paintings only mimic the perfect beauty of a plant or animal or sky, but they do express my admiration. They are my way of collecting and documenting, my way of recalling and touching a place and it’s lifeforms without having to pick up a stone.
