Flights of Fancy Art By: Elizabeth Mandy
A Decorative Painter’s Colorful Creations
By Tara Kelly
Photograph by
The natural world takes flight in Elizabeth Mandy’s work. Her wall murals brim with color and whimsy, and her hand-painted bags inspire envy.
Mandy, a furniture restorer and decorative painter, moved from New York City to Millbrook in 2015. She works out of a space in the old Shekomeko General Store in Pine Plains that is filled with projects in various stages of completion: studies for a grisaille wall painting, assorted designs for a wall border, a Queen Anne mirror in the process of being restored.
While she does work in her studio, many of her commissions are done on site. She restored the Zuber wallpaper in the old dining room at the Mashomack Club in Pine Plains.
“Last winter I was working in Florida. Among other things, I did a geometric design on the client’s floor, hand painted wallpaper in the guest bathroom, painted and gilded a mirror, and painted a chest of drawers based on a fabric in the room.”
Mandy, an art major in college, got her first job with an antiques dealer. “Eighteenth-century English,” she says. “But I didn’t want to specialize in that, so I went to FIT for their two-year restoration program.
“Lacquer, Japaning, gilding, French polishing. It’s all about color and surface,” she says. One of her early jobs involved “massively restoring an 18th-century lacca povera secretary [poor man’s lacquer, in Italian]. I’m really good at color-matching,” she says. It’s a skill that seems to be at the heart of what Mandy does.
“I’ve been an artist my whole life,” she says. “When I was a little girl, my mom and I had a deal. On special occasions, she had the last word on my outfit, but otherwise I was allowed to wear whatever I wanted—plaid, stripes, polka dots—all together.”
As an adult, her wardrobe reflects the sensibility of a New York City artist, but her art embraces a vibrant palette. “I currently like making work that would be deemed pretty, and in general, I’m drawn to the natural world. I love birds, especially owls. My husband and I go to Cape May, N.J., every May for the New Jersey Audubon’s World Series of Birding. It’s a big migratory path for shore birds.” And a big inspiration for her artwork.
Recently, Markham Roberts, a decorator she often works with, asked her to do a tropical shore scene in grisaille, for a client. “Grisaille is painting on the gray scale,” Mandy says. “It was seven-and-a-half-by-five feet and made to look like old wallpaper.” She did studies, and then “he came to the studio, to tweak here and there, and we worked out the final concept together. I love the challenges of what I do—figuring a project out.”
“I’ve painted leather jackets, bags, and 60 water glasses for a friend who was hosting a lunch for the Nantucket Daffodil Festival. Decorative art is a little more on the craft side, but my basic attitude is if it can be painted, I’ll do it,” she says.