“My art is an escape world for me,” she says. Still, Elisabeth denies any politics in her paintings. It’s whimsical, but you can’t help thinking it feels like some sort of requiem for the life we’re currently throttling from Mother Earth. Hippo fantasy, one of Sullivan’s “Over-Under” series. She has turned more and more to her “over-under” pictures, where, as if looking at the world through a half-submerged snorkeling mask, she shows different fantasy portraits of life above water and below: birds nesting, penguins on small floating chunks of ice, elephants treading deserts, half-submerged monumental rock arches, cacti sprouting through water, and maybe the most famous of all, this giraffe among breaking rollers, with fish swimming around his long legs. I just paint what is beautiful.” Which makes her pictures all the more poignant. I’m angry at them, at us, for letting the world down, for not protecting this beautiful blue dot,” she says. The one thing missing from all Elisabeth Sullivan’s paintings is human beings. In fact, even when it’s depicting land animals in water, it seems dreamy, not nightmarish. The first thing I think of is rising seas, climate change - and yet the giraffe seems happy.

It’s of a giraffe, up to his neck in water.

And straightaway, I’m mesmerized by this painting of hers. He’s introducing me to his friend, the artist Elisabeth Sullivan. I’m in The Studio in Hillcrest with my friend Eric. Elisabeth Sullivan with a copy of her famous “giraffe” painting.

Fantasy valley city art