These Five Women Show us the New Face of Abstract Art
Abstract art may be known for mystery and bold instinct, but its newest voices are grounded, curious, and very much alive in the real world. This feature celebrates five painters who show us that abstraction today is not about hiding behind theory. It is about being awake to life, willing to experiment, and trusting the canvas to carry honest emotion, memory, discipline, and a bit of wonder. Each of these women stands in her own lane, steady in her vision yet open enough to let the work surprise her.
Liz Murphy paints like someone who has lived through change and decided not to hold back anymore. Her canvases feel like conversations between intuition and courage, full of movement that comes from letting go.
Kate Jarvik Birch brings focus to ordinary objects and quiet routines, turning small moments into something worth sitting with. Her steady practice and gentle eye demonstrate how abstraction can emerge from daily devotion and simple things noticed with care.
Lisa Atkinson approaches colour the way some people approach cooking, with warmth, curiosity, and an urge to share. Her paintings carry the generosity of someone who believes art should make a room feel more alive and more welcoming.
Pamela Bates paints with weather in her heart and the coastline in her breath. Her work carries tide shifts, wind gusts, and the thrill of noticing life as it happens. Every mark feels like a presence, as if someone is paying close attention.
Jessica Snow brings the curiosity of a traveller and the mind of a historian. Her canvases wander through ideas, landscapes, ruins, and maps, blending past and present in a way that feels both playful and thoughtful, like stepping into a story that is still being written.
Together, these artists demonstrate that abstraction is not a departure from life. It is leaning into it. It is a way of looking closely, staying curious, and letting colour and form carry what words sometimes cannot. They do not paint to impress. They paint to explore, to feel, and to invite us into their worlds, long enough for us to start noticing our own with a little more wonder.
Liz Murphy @lizmurphystudio
Liz Murphy paints like someone who has lived many creative lives and has finally arrived at the one that feels most like home.
Born and raised in Surrey, England, she studied Graphic Design at Kingston University. She went on to build a multi-faceted creative career, from illustrating New York Times bestselling children’s books and designing product lines to leading creative teams in London and founding a successful interior design business in New Jersey, where she has lived since 2005.
After years of creating for others, Liz became curious about what her creativity might look like without a client brief, a budget, or a deadline. Following a health scare and a major life reset after divorce, she gave herself permission to find out. What began as quiet experimentation with abstract art soon evolved into a profound practice of self-expression and a journey home to her creative soul.
Drawing on four decades of experience in art and design, Liz discovered a way to merge intuition, emotion, and aesthetic clarity—an approach she now shares with students around the world. Her paintings emerge through layers of gesture, texture, and restraint: a conversation between freedom and structure, risk and refinement. Each piece stands as a living record of exploration rather than a tool of control.
Today, Liz’s paintings can be found in homes and public spaces worldwide, including the office of President Bill Clinton. While she no longer designs physical interiors, she approaches her art in much the same way – believing her work helps make a home a feeling rather than merely a place.
As part of this feature on five abstract painters, Liz brings wit, warmth, and a depth of experience that reminds us creativity isn’t something we chase; it’s something we come home to.
Kate Jarvik Birch @kebirch
Kate Jarvik Birch lives and works in Salt Lake City, Utah, and holds a degree in Painting and Drawing from the University of Utah (2005). Her journey into making images every day began partly as a way to stay engaged during busy seasons of life: she once reflected that, even amid family and other demands, she stuck to a “painting-a-day” project.
What’s striking about her work is the way she picks simple, often familiar items—a bowl of fruit, a glass of water, a match just blown out—and renders them in such a way that they pause time for a second. She mentions finding herself painting “everyday objects” because she notices they carry more weight than we tend to give them credit for.
Her art has found its way into unexpected outlets, from large chain stores like Target and World Market to TV shows like Glee and films like 21 Jump Street.
In this lineup of five abstract painters, Kate is the one who keeps reminding us that abstraction doesn’t require grand gestures or sweeping epic narratives to hold our attention. Instead, she invites us into a quiet act of looking—into how light lingers on a surface, how colour drifts over a form, how something very ordinary might strike us by surprise.
Her studio life, her daily discipline, and her willingness to let modest materials lead the way give her work a warmth and approachability that makes it feel like an open invitation rather than a fortress of “specialness.”
Lisa Atkinson @atkinsonarts
Lisa Atkinson talks about color the way a chef talks about flavor. She believes that paint can comfort, surprise and maybe even help us feel a little better in our bodies. That belief traces all the way back to Santa Monica, where she grew up watching sunlight sparkle across the ocean and learning early that making images could connect her to others. By the time she sold a collage in high school, she already knew this path was hers.
Her studies carried her from Los Angeles to Cambridge and then to Paris, where she split her time between the studio and cooking school. Food and painting became intertwined for her. A textured layer feels like frosting. A translucent wash feels like a silky sauce. There is joy in every comparison.
She is inspired by painters who believed color could stir emotion through atmosphere and energy, and she channels that history into something generous and full of curiosity. Looking at her work feels a little like stepping into a feast. Swirls, marks and patches of color guide the eye along a journey that can feel both playful and grounding at once.
Lisa loves the idea that art feeds people. Not with literal nourishment, though she would be happy if you enjoyed a snack while viewing her work, but through a lift in the heart or a new way of seeing a familiar day. She is fascinated by the long history of color being tied to well-being, and she treats that possibility with equal parts wonder and delight.
Included here among five abstract painters, Lisa contributes a spirit of generosity. Her canvases seem to say come closer, take your time, let this brighten the space you’re in. She paints from a place that believes joy deserves to be shared, and that a splash of unexpected color can feel like dessert.
Pamela Bates @pamelajbates
Pamela Bates paints like someone who refuses to let life slip past unnoticed. She grew up near the New Hampshire coast, learning early how to pay attention to the world. The shift of tide, the whispers in a salt breeze, the way color changes as clouds roll by. All of it stayed with her.
Her turning point arrived in a museum in Boston. A guard flipped on the lights and suddenly El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent blazed into view. The moment hit her so strongly she felt pushed backward. It was a jolt, a wake-up, a calling. She went home, found her paints, and something inside her said keep going. She has not stopped since.
Pamela once worked behind screens and software. Today she stands in a studio, sending emotion into pigment and letting story unfold one mark at a time. She talks about wanting to taste the sea air, to spot every shade of green in a leaf, to laugh until tears come, to feel it all and pour it back onto a surface before the moment fades. That impulse gives her paintings a pulse. They feel lived-in, weather-touched, salt-kissed.
She draws constant energy from the place she calls home. Sunset meadows outside her window. The Atlantic, sometimes calm, sometimes furious. The people she loves. The joy and the heartbreak. The way a sudden memory can feel like a spark. Her work holds all of that without needing to spell it out.
Included here among five abstract painters, Pamela brings a spirit that is both curious and wholehearted. Her canvases feel like invitations to stay awake to the world. Look closely, they say. There is beauty everywhere, even in the toughest chapters. She is busy noticing. Busy listening. Busy turning life into color again and again until the story feels complete.
Jessica Snow @jessnow01
Jessica Snow carries a traveler’s curiosity into everything she makes. Born in Berkeley and rooted in the Bay Area, she has spent decades wandering through ancient sites, gardens, museums, coastal paths and city streets around the world. Those journeys do not simply influence her work. They seem to rearrange her imagination.
She studied at UC Davis and Mills College, with time in Paris and at Skowhegan, gathering ideas and tools that would eventually form her language as a painter and filmmaker. Now she teaches art history at the University of San Francisco, which feels fitting for someone who treats history like a treasure chest waiting to be opened again and again.
When Jessica paints, history and the present sit side by side. Shapes suggest architecture or maps. Color arcs hint at ancient stories. Movement in her compositions can feel like an excavation, as though each layer brings a lost fragment into daylight. Greece left a particularly strong mark. On Crete she fell for myths, sea winds and Minoan ruins, and that experience shaped a series that feels like wandering through symbols from another age. Later on the island of Kephalonia she developed a playful dotting technique that channels the tides and currents around her.
Her curiosity stretches beyond the canvas. She created a film that won in the experimental category at a festival in Madrid, circling ideas of time and what it means to make anything at all. She has also completed many residencies in places like France, Uruguay and Greece, always chasing the next conversation between place and imagination.
As part of this feature on five abstract painters, Jessica brings a sense of wonder grounded in study and movement. Her work looks toward the future while keeping company with the distant past. She invites us to slow down and notice how shapes can tell stories, how travel lingers in the mind and how creativity can turn a simple mark into a portal.
There is something steadying about watching five artists carve their own paths with such clarity and care. None of them paint to follow a trend or prove a point. They paint because it is how they stay awake to their lives, how they move through change, and how they stay curious when the world asks for shortcuts. Their work shows that abstract art is not an escape. It is a practice of paying attention, of letting instinct sit beside skill, and of trusting that questions can be just as valuable as answers.
As these five women continue to explore, layer, scrape, and rebuild, they remind us that art grows through living, not rushing. Their canvases are not final declarations; they are invitations. Stay with the color a little longer. Look again. Let a mark surprise you. There is something here made by hand, by heart, and by a mind willing to wander.
If this is the new face of abstract art, it is a hopeful one. Honest. Searching. Full of curiosity and grounded in real life. And as their work keeps evolving, so will the ways we see, feel, and understand the quiet magic of a painting that asks us not for answers, but for presence.
