Elizabeth Aline Colborne was born in South Dakota in 1885. Her father, a prominent civil engineer, designed the sewer system for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1892, and it is from him that she first learned to draw and perhaps inherited her deftness and skill with design. Orphaned by the age of 8, Elizabeth was sent to live with her maternal aunt and uncle in Bellingham in 1897.

Elizabeth graduated from Whatcom High School in 1903, and having shown an interest and aptitude in art, she was enrolled in the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. There she studied drawing and printmaking under the tenure of renowned artists Arthur Wesley Dow and Walter S. Parry.

Dow was very influential in the burgeoning Arts and Crafts movement in the US. His book, Composition, published in 1899, laid an important foundation for teaching print-making in the US. According to Dow, composition consisted of “the ‘putting together’ of lines, masses and colors to make a harmony.” He embraced the design aesthetic of “notan” (from Japanese: “no” meaning “dark,” “tan” meaning “pale”) in which the use of dark and light areas in a composition to create shape and depth on a two-dimensional surface.

In 1905, Elizabeth completed her studies at Pratt with high praise from her instructors who predicted that she would “make a name for herself in illustration.” Elizabeth returned to Bellingham and opened a studio in her aunt and uncle’s home on Eldridge Avenue (later moving to a downtown location) where she gave art lessons, including to a young Helen Loggie who lived a few blocks away.

In 1907, Elizabeth was hired by the Decorative Designers firm in New York, an artist collective that created book covers, dust jackets, and text decorations. She received her first commission for book illustration in 1908, the first of many to come. She was a sought-after illustrator in the publishing world and also wrote and illustrated several books of her own.

In addition to illustration, water color painting and wood block printing, Elizabeth refined a technique she called “solar etching” to create prints. The method was based on “cliché verre” in which glass plates are covered on one side with a “ground,” a design is scratched through the ground and the glass laid on photosensitive paper. With exposure to the sun, a design is left on the paper which can then be hand painted with water colors.

In the ensuing years, Elizabeth returned to New York City to continue her training. She studied painting with Robert Henri and Rockwell Kent at the National Academy of Design and woodblock printing with Allen Lewis at the Art Students’ League. She divided her time between New York City and Bellingham, and exhibited several times in galleries of New York City, Seattle, and Bellingham.

In 1933, experiencing the economic effects of the Great Depression, Elizabeth spent a summer in a cabin on the shores of Lake Whatcom drawing and keeping a journal of her daily life. The following year, she participated in President Roosevelt’s Public Works of Art Project.

For the last six years of her life, during the height of WWII, Elizabeth led a team of technical illustrators at the Boeing Company in the creation of blueprints and manuals. She remained single and died in Seattle in 1948.

Elizabeth’s exposure to the Arts and Crafts movement, her expertise in wood block printing, and her affinity with the flora of her hometown, come together in her most well-known works. She was masterful at the Japanese technique of multi-block printing and utilized color, massed silhouettes and perspective in a way that is quite distinct among her contemporaries.

For a detailed look at the work of Elizabeth Colborne, please see David F. Martin, The Evergreen Muse: The Art of Elizabeth Colborne.