Elizabeth Kleinveld
Elizabeth Kleinveld is a self-taught artist and photographer from New Orleans, who spent a year documenting the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In 2007 Kleinveld shifted her focus to flowers, finding inspiration from the vibrant colors of exotic flowers and their reflection in water, which gives her work an abstract and painterly quality. In 2008 when Lehman Brothers fell and the credit crisis ensued, Kleinveld began using flowers to show another reality, namely how their beauty can be turned into something ugly when we use that beauty as a means to show off our status.
Her work (photography and mixed media) has been exhibited in the United States Senate, New Orleans Museum of Art, the Louisiana State Museum, the Royal Delft Museum, the Colorado Fine Arts Center, Houston’s DiverseWorks, Affordable Art Fair (Amsterdam), the Amsterdam Photo Biennale, Open Art Fair (Utrecht), the Darkroom (New Orleans), Taylor Bercier (New Orleans), Arps Gallery (Amsterdam) and DeGalerieDenHaag (the Hague). Her Katrina series has been catalogued in the New Orleans Museum of Art’s Katrina Exposed (2006), the Road to Peace show in The Hague's City Hall (2007), 'It Ain't Necessarily So' with prize-winning Dutch poet, Rogi Wieg (2008), and in the China- Korea International Art Interchange Exhibition (2008).
In 2009, Dutch publisher, Museum Cards Amersfort, published art cards of Kleinveld’s work and in 2010, together with the Royal Delft museum, they brought out more art cards, birthday calendars, address books and notebooks. In 2010, the University of New Orleans Press, published the book, Before During After: Louisiana Photographers Visual Reactions to Hurricane Katrina, a companion for the international traveling exhibition for which Kleinveld is the project ‘s Director.
Kleinveld's work has been covered by the Washington Post, Washington Times, Houston Chronicle, Greater Houston Weekly, Louisiana Life Magazine, Kunst & Antiek Journaal, More than Classic, and many other international newspapers and magazines. Her work is held in museums and private collections in the United States, Europe and Asia.