Biography

San Francisco Bay Area photographic artist, Elizabeth Opalenik, "paints with light" and is one of our Xtreme Process specialists. Her innovative works in mordançage* and handpainted images have been shown in over sixty exhibitions internationally and are in museum, gallery and private collections throughout the world. Her images reside in such collections as La Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Milwaukee Art Museum among others. A sought-after educator, she privately leads figure and Xtreme process workshops in California, France's Provence and Burgundy regions, Italy's Tuscany region and in Mexico. She also conducts classes for the Maine Photographic Workshops, Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, the British Guild of Portrait Photographers and others. Elizabeth says of her work, "From the elegance of light falling on a beautifully textured wall, to the beauty of ones soul, my photographs seek to reveal the sensuality and serenity of the world that we inhabit physically and spiritually. They are a way of seeing not only that which is visible to the eye, but also sensed with the heart. They are my perception, imagination and way of understanding the world and I teach with the theory that all good photographs are self portraits. I choose nature's palette and my guide, but all comes back to seeing first and being aware of the beauty in life that surrounds us daily." See more of her work at her website www.opalenik.com. *Known in English as the Mordant process, it loosens the emulsion in the shadow areas of a print allowing them to be manipulated Polaroid transfer-style or removed altogether.