Provincetown artist Elisabeth Pearl, who painted colorful street scenes in works such as Carnival Parade, Gathering at Spiritus, and Book Sale at the Old Library, died on May 25, 2024 at Harbor Point in Centerville after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 79.
The daughter of the late Morris and Ruth (Cohen) Breslaw, Elisabeth was born on May 18, 1945 in Coney Island, Brooklyn, where she grew up in an apartment above a shop run by her Russian immigrant grandmother on Mermaid Avenue, one block from the ocean and the amusement park, according to a 1999 profile by Jan Kelly. The shop, which evolved from a pushcart, sold bathing suits in the summer and underwear in the winter, Kelly wrote.
Elisabeth’s mother studied art at the Pratt Institute, but her talents were confined to dressing the shop window and painting signs. Elizabeth studied art at the State University of New York at New Paltz. After receiving her B.A., she taught in New Paltz area schools before moving to Boston, where she taught art at the Girls’ Latin School.
Wanting more time for her own art, Elisabeth trained as a lab technician and worked at Newton-Wellesley Hospital until 1993, when she settled permanently in Provincetown and devoted herself to painting every day from 9 to 5.
“I don’t wait for inspiration, I just do it,” she said in 1999. “Sometimes I spend all day in one small square; other days the energy flows better.”
Elisabeth had a democratic view of art. “Very often,” she said, “people are intimidated by galleries because they think they do not know enough about art. Art should be for everyone!”
Her street scenes, with store fronts, human figures, and pets (especially dogs), combine images from her Coney Island childhood, her years in Boston, and the more immediately vibrant Provincetown scene.
Viewers, she said, “can identify with the subject, which is life. If they go a step further, they discover that I’ve tried to communicate something much more abstract — artistic communication in the purest sense. Color relationships, forms, composition, light, and energy: these are the traditional values of art.”
In the late 1990s Elisabeth began work on what she called “Idea Art,” using computer parts and boards she found at the dump. She created icons, mixed-media scenes, often on Biblical themes derived from Medieval and Renaissance art, and “small shrinelike shapes,” as Kelly put it.
She also did a series of abstract “Cosmic” paintings, evoking particle physics, eastern mysticism, and philosophy.
In a 2023 review of the retrospective “Ubiquitous and Familiar: The Paintings of Elisabeth Pearl,” Steve Desroches wrote that Elisabeth’s “contemporary icons,” with their oblique references to Christian artistic imagery, are works through which she “makes eye contact with the viewer,” in contrast to her street scenes were the human figures never look out from the canvas.
Elisabeth was a member of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum’s exhibition committee for 20 years. She has been represented by the Larkin Gallery in Provincetown since 2014, and she was the recipient of a Mass. Arts Lottery Council grant.
Her work has been exhibited at numerous museums including the Boston Athenaeum, the Copley Society, and the Cape Cod Museum of Art. Her work can also be found in private and public collections, including the Fiduciary Trust of Boston, Lifeline Systems, and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.
Elisabeth is survived by her spouse, Alexandra Smith of Provincetown.
She was predeceased by her brother, Peter Breslaw of New York City.
There is no memorial service planned at this time. Donations in her memory may be made to the Alzheimer’s Family Support Center of Cape Cod, 2095 Main St., Brewster 02631 or to a favorite charity.
