The Departure and Return

Elissa Lieberman (b. 1975, Columbus, OH) earned her MFA in 2002 from the Maryland Institute College of Art,

Hoffberger School of Painting under the mentorship of Grace Hartigan. Though her plan was to move directly to New York City, she was derailed by love and followed a partner to San Diego instead. For two decades, she established herself as a master educator, teaching at nearly every local college and a collection of ateliers. After briefly heading operations at the San Diego Museum of Art, Museum art School, she moved to Portland Oregon and took a break from teaching to work with the develpmentally disabled.

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In 2011, she returned to San Diego.. Elissa opened up her large studio and gallery as a communial art school founded in 2015. By founding the San Diego Art Loft, Elissa could teach the fundamentals while continuing her own work.  It became a premier community sanctuary for figurative art, hosting the Sunday evening life drawing groups and fostering a vibrant creative hub. San Diego Art Loft was nominated in the top five art schools in San Diego by City Beat magazine and it was a solo project. This chapter ended abruptly in March 2020 when the pandemic and an catastrophic studio flood shuttered the space in April. A series of traumatic events followed that led to a five-year period of profound withdrawal and an inability to paint or draw.

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It was not until the fall of 2025 that Lieberman began the arduous process of "cleaning the cobwebs" from her studio, engaging in the very exercises she once reserved for her students. Her skills returned with newfound vigor—

a resurrection that saw her completing a powerful new portrait exercize every day for weeks.

In November, during a visit to New York, Elissa happened upon an apartment and studio sublet in Chelsea, Manhattan. She made a life changing decision not to wait and to move to New York City. Despite a second catastrophic flood just days before her move, which claimed years of drawings and supplies, Lieberman arrived in New York City in January 2026. She now works vigorously from her Chelsea studio, making up for lost time painting and drawing faces and stories of survival..