Local artist debuts new portraits and abstract series benefiting charities at Full of Life Flatbread

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While local artist Elizabeth Chaney considers herself quiet and introverted, she described her art as the opposite. 

“My art is my voice, and it’s very loud,” Chaney said. 

She specializes in portraiture, painting images of celebrities like Paul Reubens and Madonna and political figures like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. At the beginning of April, she hung new paintings on a wall dedicated to her artwork at Full of Life Flatbread in Los Alamos. 

Her relationship with the owner of the restaurant, Clark Staub, started in 2018, following the death of the famous chef Anthony Bourdain. Staub organized a tribute to Bourdain and a suicide prevention fundraiser at the restaurant, and Chaney, inspired by Bourdain, requested to hang a portrait she had painted of him, offering to donate some of the proceeds from its sale to suicide prevention efforts. 

“[Bourdain] was a storyteller, in a way, and I consider myself a storyteller,” Chaney explained. “I feel like he wasn’t afraid to break the rules. It was more important to him to just break bread with people of different cultures, and I admired that approach.”

For the last several years, Chaney has continued to hang paintings on the wall at Full of Life Flatbread, donating a portion of the proceeds to different charities. For the new series she hung, she will donate 10 percent of each sale to one of five charities selected by the buyer: Planned Parenthood, National Park Service, World Central Kitchen, International Rescue Committee, and Suicide Prevention Alliance. 

“It’s always just things that I stand firmly on, and I just really want to make a difference,” she emphasized. “Those five charities are things that are really important to me.”

Her new series features portraits of Zelenskyy, Christopher Walken, and Staub, as well as some abstract landscape work. Staub said that he was “blown away” when he first saw his own portrait and laughed while explaining the challenge of having a painting of himself in his restaurant. 

“If I don’t hang it in the restaurant, then she’s going to take offense to that, and if I do hang it, people are going to think I’m totally full of myself,” he said. “Fortunately, it’s worked out.”

When choosing a person to paint, Chaney thinks about current events, major figures, and the stories of people who stand out to her. 

“The person has to have an interesting face, and the story is what compels me to paint,” she explained. “It’s just something that I have to be moved by that person or the story in order for the painting to come out good.”

Sometimes, she leans toward more controversial figures, and with that comes varied responses from the public. 

“For the negative comments or the really mean comments, I realize art is meant to evoke emotion, and so, I feel I’m doing my job if I evoke some sort of emotion from some person,” Chaney said. 

Before painting someone, she explained that she starts by doing a lot of research on the person to get a better understanding of their backstory. 

“The more information I have about that person, it really helps me illustrate their story,” she said. “For me, when I do a portrait, I need to have tons of pictures of that person from every angle and different ages and this and that, and then I can really gather the true essence of them as a person.”

Chaney explained that because she puts so much time and thought into creating a portrait of someone, she usually “allows” herself to paint an abstract next. The process of doing an abstract is much more “loose” and “free” compared to the process of a portrait. 

“My abstracts are pure passion,” she said. “It just comes from my soul, and I don’t usually have any reference. It just comes out of my heart, and it’s just really rewarding.” 

Full of Life Flatbread owner Staub described all of Chaney’s artwork as beautiful, adding that he’s excited to continue working with her and other artists. 

“It’s an honor to be part of their creativity,” he said. “It’s just an honor to see what other people’s perception is of what we do and how it fits into what we do.”

Staff Writer Emma Montalbano can be reached at emontalbano@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in May 1-11, 2025.