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Elizabeth MacDonald

"To bring a work to life, I use only the pieces before me, as if I had opened a jigsaw puzzle box and spread the shapes all around, recognizing how organically the imagery evolves. The challenge lies in trusting that a dynamic will emerge as one that is stronger than any I could preconceive."

Elizabeth MacDonald discovered her current mosaic-making technique by happenstance. One day, while cleaning up her clay studio, she pressed leftover stain powder into a scrap of moist clay and tore the edges off around a block of wood. She immediately realized that she had found a way to use color that would satisfy her need for spontaneity and surprise, accomplishing both delicacy and crustiness.

Now she produces such "scraps" on purpose, pressing clay slabs into powdered pigment, tearing them into squares, firing them, and assembling them into compelling mosaic images such as these.