Matheson, Elizabeth (Photography)

Arguably one of North Carolina’s most respected photographers, for her 30 years as an artist with a camera, Elizabeth Matheson received the prestigious North Carolina Award in 2004. The state’s highest honor, she received it in the Fine Art category. Matheson is a native of Hillsborough, NC. She began photographing in 1970 and in 1972 began her studies with John Menapace at the Penland School of Crafts. Her photographs have been exhibited and published widely. Matheson is best known for her delicate and deliberate images that capture a moment in a particular place. The photographer’s intention with the work is “to take a piece of the world and make it (her) own. It’s a celebration of it.” Matheson has an uncanny way of conveying a space just before something happens or in between events. An Elizabeth Matheson photograph captures the essence of her work--both its elegance and the small details that transform it into something more haunting than merely a beautiful image.   Elizabeth Matheson was born in Hillsborough, North Carolina, in 1942 to Elizabeth and Donald Matheson. Her father was a Democratic legislator and county agricultural agent. She attended St. Mary's in Raleigh and earned a bachelor's degree from Sweet Briar College in 1964. After spending time in London, she moved to New York City, where she worked for several years in the textbook division of Harper and Row. In 1972, she returned to North Carolina when her husband, sculptor Robin Costelloe, joined the faculty at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Matheson said that being "surrounded by all that giddy creative energy" at the school inspired her to pursue photography. That summer, she spent a month at the Penland School of Crafts, studying with photographer John Menapace, who became her mentor and friend. She describes it as "a truly mountaintop experience, then I came down from the mountain and had at it." Even more determined to perfect her craft, she set up her own darkroom to process black and white prints. The next year her work was included in the North Carolina Museum of Art's North Carolina Artists Exhibition for the first time. Her first major show was in 1976 as part of the Ten Women Artists exhibition at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem. She has taken part in group and solo exhibitions across the country, including at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. in the exhibition called Nine from North Carolina. The Gallery of Art & Design at North Carolina State University presented her most recent exhibition, Vibrant Transparency, in 2003. Matheson has received a Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art/NEA grant and a North Carolina Arts Council Artists Fellowship. Her pictures are in a large number of private and public collections, among them the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Ackland Museum in Chapel Hill. Matheson had a solo exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art in 1990. The museum asked her to give a gallery talk but, naturally shy about public speaking, Matheson asked her friend Michael McFee to give it instead. Happy to oblige, McFee wrote the poem quoted above, among others, for the talk. Out of that favor grew the book "To See" with his poetry paired with the photographs that inspired them, published in 1991 by North Carolina Wesleyan Press. Perhaps her most unusual exhibition was The Larger Canvas in 1998. The Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh placed four of her photographs on billboards across the state. Architecture and landscape are often Matheson's subjects. Her books, "Edenton: A Portrait in Words and Pictures" and "A Sense of Place: Hillsborough, North Carolina," explore these themes as photographic celebrations to two North Carolina towns.  In "Blithe Air: Photographs of England, Wales, and Ireland," she captures the mystery and ordinariness of those countries.  Her latest book is “Shell Castle: Portrait of a North Carolina House”. “I never photograph anything I don't think is beautiful. Shell Castle is the most soulfully beautiful place I've ever seen.” --Elizabeth Matheson Shell Castle, a late eighteenth-century plantation house in Halifax County, North Carolina, remained in the same family for two centuries. The book documents the plantation during the last days of Charles Whitaker, the last member of the family who built Shell Castle.  Additional photographs show the harm done by the new owners. The text and photographs are complemented by Catherine Bishir's afterword essay, which places Shell Castle and its inhabitants in social and historical context. Catherine W. Bishir has been involved with preservation and architectural history since 1971. She has published several significant guides to the historic architecture of North Carolina.  Matheson still lives in her hometown of Hillsborough, NC. Somerhill Gallery Director Joseph Rowand commented: “What a great life I have as an art dealer to know this artist, admire the art, view the pictures and hear the stories behind the pictures.  The Shell Castle book signing is a not to be missed opportunity for our gallery goers, architectural buffs, North Carolina history aficionados and those who love the visual story of a moment frozen by a gifted artist’s eye.”