Untitled House in Moonlight, Oil Painting by Elizabeth Payne b.1948

27 1/4”W x 27 1/4”H x 2”D

This oil painting exemplifies Elizabeth Payne’s distinctive approach to color, structure, and place—an approach shaped by decades of formal training and lived experience across the American landscape. Educated at the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA), and Hunter College, New York (MFA), Payne spent nearly twenty years working in New York City, where her work was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial. She now lives and works in rural Texas, a shift that has deeply informed her visual language.

The composition is anchored by a sharply angled roofline that slices through a luminous blue sky, transforming a familiar architectural form into a bold geometric statement. Planes of warm ochre, deep violet, and midnight blue are edged with expressive lines, revealing Payne’s painterly hand and her roots in modernist abstraction. A single glowing orb—moonlike and enigmatic—floats above the structure, introducing stillness and a sense of quiet suspension.

Payne’s work often balances architectural clarity with emotional resonance. Here, color operates structurally rather than descriptively: warm tones advance, cool fields recede, and the simplified window becomes a subtle human presence within an otherwise distilled landscape. The surrounding sky and horizon dissolve into soft gradients, evoking memory rather than specific location.

Rooted in Fauvist sensibilities and mid-century modern abstraction, Payne’s paintings invite viewers to look beyond surface representation and experience place as feeling. This work stands as both a contemplative image and a strong visual object—well suited to contemporary interiors that value bold color relationships, refined geometry, and poetic restraint.

TX Artist

21st Century