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Liz Conces Spencer

Visual Artist: Paintings

About the artist: BIO:

Liz Conces Spencer paints color field, landscape and figurative abstractions in a variety of media. Her work commonly reveals our universal bonds and similarities in the abstracted human form. Landscape and cityscape works balance strong composition with vivid color: they allude to and morph into the color field studies, which derive their structure and energy from these sources.

Conces grew up in the refinery town of Pasadena, Texas, adjacent to Houston. She drew from an early age and was awarded a scholarship to study painting at the University of St. Thomas in the 1970’s. Intrigued by the visual tangle of urban/suburban life, she began to visually interpret what would become a lifetime study of figures and patterned landscapes. This reflection has crossed media lines from traditional painting to printmaking and recently to fused glass.

A Winant Clayton Volunteer in 1975, Conces developed and supervised a summer art program for 300 underprivileged children in London. From 1982 – 1986, she taught at Houston’s St. Thomas High School and Incarnate Word Academy. She has conducted continuing education classes and seminars for the Museum of Fine Arts-Houston, the University of St. Thomas, St. Luke’s United Methodist Church and the City of Richardson, Texas. In 1999, Conces and the Wesley House, a community outpost of the United Methodist Church, received project funding from the Cultural Arts Council/Houston for her afterschool art program for underprivileged youth. She currently teaches for the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, City Artworks and Young Audiences of Houston. She serves on the board of City Artworks, a nonprofit enrichment program for children.

Freelance design work for a startup company in the infant industry led to her internationally marketed line of infant soft goods. Until 1995, she was Art Director for Little Feet Industries, which manufactured licensed products for Gerber Childrenswear, Binky, Crayola and the World Wildlife Fund. Conces created, licensed and owns copyrights to over one hundred published designs. She has also illustrated several projects, including a text published by Oxford University Press.

A long exhibition history began shortly after her college experience and continues today. Inn 1996, Conces co-founded the White Oak Artists Collective, which organized art exhibitions for over seven years for local and regional visual artists. She currently shows in Houston with Archway Gallery, in Galveston with Simply Art, in Marble Falls with J Space Gallery and in Punta de Mita, Mexico with Art & Philanthrophy.

Commissions include three pieces installed at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and fused glass work for Camp Aranzazu in Rockport, Texas.

Conces worked for McCann-Erickson and now for J. Walter Thompson in broad- cast production. A part-time schedule allows daily studio time, and she paints at Mother Dog Studios in the downtown area. A sampling of additional work can be viewed online at www.lizconces.com.