About Me

Elize McKelvey is a freelance illustrator and fine artist with over a decade of professional experience working across portrait and figure painting, children's book illustration, editorial illustration, and military documentary art. She holds a BFA in Illustration and is currently completing her MFA at Academy of Art University.

McKelvey served for over 8 years in the Marine Corps as a combat camera Marine and combat artist deploying to document Marine Corps history through drawing and painting, a practice rooted in direct observation and the tradition of war art. She became the first active duty Marine to paint the Portrait of the Commandant which hangs in both the Pentagon and the Home of the Commandants in Washington D.C.  Her clients have included Netflix, The Smithsonian Institution, the Norman Rockwell Museum, Pilot Pen, Marine Corps Times, Michaels Craft Stores, and the Marine Corps Recruiting Command.

Her studio work focuses on the stories behind her time in the Marines. She also excels in Portrait, figure painting and landscape painting. She is represented by the brand Inkstickart and is based in Salida, Colorado.