Elisabeth Alford and Pixilated Portraits

Her story and contributions to:• Wichita Falls• Op Art and the 60s• Munsell System• Pixilated Portraits Inspire

Elisabeth Turner Alford (1915- 2004) Facts

Lived and worked in Wichita Falls her entire life

Her brother Leslie Turner was a national syndicated cartoonist

Traveled often and as far away as Egypt

Taught at Ben Franklin Elementary and Hirschi High

Later she taught weaving and painting at Midwestern State

Her painting style was influenced by the Op Art movement

Her paintings and weavings were exhibited and collected in

Dallas, Austin and Washington D.C. as well as locally and in west

Texas

Her 3 Dimensional Form of 558 precise colors is on permanent

display at the Optical Society of America in Washington D.C.

Influenced by Op Artists of 1960s

VICTOR VASARELY--- OPTICAL EFFECTS OF LINE AND COLOR

Op art with Vibrating Colors

SIMPLE LINE CHANGES CAN CREATE ILLUSIONS

ALFORD’S FOCUS WAS COLOR

Elisabeth Alford ( private collection)

Elisabeth Alford

Tricks with ColorThe Rule of Simultaneous Contrasts

Stare here for 30 seconds Then stare here for after image

Alford uses simultaneous contrasts to create the Illusion of a 3rd Color.

Elisabeth Alford- In the collection of Wichita Falls Museum of Art

The Use of Warm and Cool Colors Creates a Push-Pull Effect and Engages the Viewer by Creating a

Conflicting Figure/Ground Relationship

Blue Bonnets Elisabeth Alford

Alford’s engaged the Munsell Color System to study colorhttp://munsell.com/color-products/color-education/

S

Working with Hue, Value and Chroma in a 3-D model in order to Standardize Colors

Science and Industry have adoptedthe Munsell system to identify color in an exacting and standardized way.

Putting Color Theory to Work

Alford became interested in a pixilated, low resolution images in 1965 when she saw an artist’s early computer program which broke a photograph portrait down into a grid of 24X24 squares of flat color, that remains recognizable.

“I decided that if he could do it with photography I could do it in paintings. . .

Libby Alford process. “. . . I photographed flowers at

nurseries, bought fruit and vegetables and brought them home and photographed them also.

I enlarged the photos and broke the surfaces up into geometric shapes— sometimes squares, circles, or other geometric shapes.

Then I would analyze each shape as to what flat color it should be painted in order to achieve my goal. I used the Munsell Color System to match the colors. The next job was to mix up all those little jars of paint.. . .

Elisabeth Alford, collection of the Kemp Art Center

“It was time-consuming, but a labor of love. . . .”

“I had a six shelf high bookcase full of bottles of mixed colors with the lightest value colors at the top, value 9, and down to the darkest value colors at the bottom.”

“It was time-consuming, but a labor of love as I began to see the images emerging. The resulting paintings were worth the effort to me personally and were quite successful with the public, thankfully.”

“I wanted viewers to become involved in the seeing process and hoped that they would continue to notice different aspects of the painting as time passed.”

Elisabeth Alford (Detail)

Later in Life When she could no

longer paint, she made smaller weavings, macrame and small jewelry- like pieces.

She died when she was 89 years old.