The True Lifecycle of an Artist at PAFA

Elizabeth Osborne’s lifelong relationship with PAFA started long before she enrolled at the Academy in 1954.

Osborne (Penn-PAFA BFA ’58) met longtime PAFA faculty member Hobson Pittman when she was a teen and he taught art classes at Friends Central Day School, where she attended.

“He was a very wonderful teacher and he was so kind and involved with students he worked with,” she said. “I originally thought I would go to the University of the Arts because I had taken classes there on Saturday mornings but he told me I must come to the Academy. He sort of turned me to North Broad instead of South Broad.”

That change in direction set in motion a more than 60 year relationship with PAFA. She has gone from student, to faculty member, to solo exhibitor in the museum, and now to honored alumna.

As a student, Osborne said she was serious and she spent more time in the studio than out socializing. But she did develop deep friendships with a few classmates that would last a lifetime.

“Lou Sloan, who was a year ahead of me, and Ray Saunders were my closest friends,” Osborne said. “I just bonded with them as friends because I admired their work so much. Even as students you could see they were gifted and motivated.”

The trio eventually went onto become colleagues when they came together again as PAFA faculty members in the 1960’s. Osborne’s teaching career at PAFA stretched more than 45 years, she retired in 2011.

“It was a gift that the Academy invited me to come teach when I was so young,” Osborne said.

“Teaching allows you to have time to paint. At the Academy you could teach a few days and then you could paint, you were able to have time to work.”

When she began teaching evening classes, Osborne was the only female faculty member at PAFA.

“It didn't bother me but I was certainly aware of it. Finally they hired Martha Zelt in printmaking department and she was very talented,” she said. “I was supportive of them bringing women in like Jody Pinto, they started bringing in talented women.”

After a few years of teaching foundation cast drawing to first year students, Osborne became a critic. She remembers the experience as exhausting, with Osborne spending a lot of time running up and down the steps of the Peale House building on Chestnut Street to visit student studios.

Step count aside, talking with students about their work had an impact on Osborne’s own studio work and art practice.

“Being a critic you walk into these private worlds where every student was different and that was very personal. I often took away a color or a method or something that student was doing that I could maybe attempt to play with myself or look into further. Teaching is a great balance to painting.”

This fall Osborne will be honored with the Thomas Jefferson Award at PAFA’s 21st Annual Bacchanal Wine Gala & Auction. The annual event supports student scholarships at PAFA. Since Bacchanal’s inception more than $9 million has been raised to support student scholarships and education programs.

“I’m 83 and I think you get more and more confident about who you are and what you’ve done as you get older,” Osborne said. “It's wonderful to have this recognition.”

Looking back, Osborne said she never could have imagined this is where she would be when she took her first class at PAFA in 1954.

“I’ve had such a long relationship with the Academy in my life, with teaching and painting and coming to exhibitions,” she said. “I never would have imagined that this place would have meant so much to me, it’s like a second marriage.”

—LeAnne Matlach (lmatlach@pafa.org)