“Neptune’s Children,” the Art of Elizabeth Brody-Hastings, Opening at Ocean Publishing

The artwork of Elizabeth Brody-Hastings will be featured at the Ocean Publishing Gallery on S. Oceanshore Boulevard on Oct. 14. Ocean’s publisher Frank Gromling is excited about introducing Brody-Hastings’ art to Flagler County residents and visitors because he feels deeply the emotional content of her work–the spirit and vitality of the ocean’s creatures, which Elizabeth calls “Neptune’s Children.”

Elizabeth Brody-Hastings is the daughter of a classical pianist father and a painter/writer mother. Embracing all three art forms, Elizabeth has been a visual artist, singer/songwriter/musician, and writer/poet since childhood. By age seventeen she was studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where she practiced realist technique. She later attained a BFA from the NY School of Visual Arts. Having experimented with more abstract styles in Manhattan, she now embraces a style which falls playfully between realist and abstract. Her work evokes Van Gogh, Manet, Matisse, Picasso, and the somewhat lesser known Alice Neil.

Gromling met Brody-Hastings several years ago while she was performing with her musical partner Katherine Archer in their eco-duo Saltwater Cowgirls throughout northeast Florida. Learning of her art talent, and that ocean conservancy is a major theme in Elizabeth’s art, music, and life, he initiated plans to bring her to his Flagler Beach gallery.

In this series of acrylics on canvas entitled “Neptune’s Children,” Brody-Hastings’s style of portraiture has been paired with her intense love for the ocean and its inhabitants. On this theme, she says, “Neptune’s world is as unpredictable as it is magnificent. There are days when Neptune’s waters are a calm, turquoise spa. On other days, when his seas are raging, I do not trust him with my children. But Neptune’s children are at home in his waters. The ocean is the playground of sea creatures and, when we are blessed with the chance to see them, it seems as if they dance for us. I find endless, rhythmic inspiration in the magic of the ocean.”

“Neptune’s Children” opens at the Ocean Publishing Gallery, 200 South Oceanshore Boulevard, Flagler Beach on Friday, October 14th at 6:00 PM. Refreshments will be served. The public is invited.