The arts community of Stillwater has strong ties to Oklahoma State University. Many of our local professional artists happen to be professors, annually passing on their knowledge to a new generation of prospective artists. Liz Roth, an OSU professor for the past 15 years or so, teaches painting and professional practices, or the ability to make it as a professional artist.
Roth is also an avid traveler, taking part in may artist residences, in which she has gone to a location to perform her craft while also living in these locations. These have brought her to Japan, China and even Alaska, and she continues to make traveling a priority.
Loving landscapes
Roth does a lot of her work with the landscapes of the world, which has been prominent in her artist residencies. She said she will even go on trips with geologists, who are able to answer any questions she might have about what they are looking at.
“A lot of my work has to do with the oil and gas industry in Oklahoma. And I’m interested in how the landscape looks,” Roth said. “There’s all this sort of nostalgic sort of equipment. Sometimes you see it and sometimes you don’t. If you’re not from Oklahoma, you see it more than if you’re from Oklahoma.
“I do a lot of reading about landscape theory and I think about how we depict the west. There’s a lot of habits we have as Americans, as opposed to Europeans depicting the west. Kind of like scenes with no people or houses or anything. So I’m very specifically making these to have people back in the landscape.”
Seeing America in its entirety
One of Roth’s previous artistic expeditions was visiting all 50 states and creating two paintings from each. She said it helped pique her interest in landscapes of all kinds.
“I did a project several years ago called America 101, where I went to all 50 states to look at landscapes and I did two paintings from each state,” Roth said. “I kept looking at these landscapes and thinking, ‘Oh, this landscape has been here since the beginning of time,’ and it’s like ‘this forest is from the 1930s.’ So for me, it’s been really interesting to see the limits of my knowledge of what I’m looking at.”
Before Oklahoma State University
Years before Roth came to OSU, she said she hadn’t been an art major in her undergrad years, originally majoring in Russian. She always had the passion for art, which eventually led her down the path to where she is now.
“I grew up in New York City, and went to a school called Smith College,” Roth said. “I was a Russian major, so I speak Russian, and I went and worked in Moscow for awhile. I took art classes in college, but I graduated college in the ’80s, and it seemed like everybody was going to be a stock broker, so I thought I couldn’t be an art major, it just seemed kind of wrong. So I went to California, and I had some money from working in Moscow, and I started taking art classes at a community college. Slowly over time, I kind of spent more time doing art. Ten years after undergrad, I went to grad school in Wisconsin, so I kind of kicked around there teaching and doing other things for money. Eventually, OSU was the best job offer that I got, and I was thrilled to come down here.”
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