Interview with Los Angeles-based artist S.P. Harper about her "Angel of Compassion" painting series

S.P. Harper, Krupp Diamond, c. 2018 - 2020, diamond dust, oil, acrylic, and mixed media on canvas. 30 x 30 x 2 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

By LIAM OTERO March 27, 2026

S.P. Harper is a Los Angeles-based fine artist known for her abstract paintings and sculptures whose forms are heavily influenced by the characteristics of gems. Furthermore, the physical build-up of these works is motivated by an eco-centricism in which reclaimed materials are the primary ingredient, an effective example of how a Contemporary artist leaves a green footprint.

Harper is currently the subject of a momentous solo exhibition at the West Hollywood Library where she is showing her seven painting series, Angel of Compassion (c. 2018 - 2020), that will be on view through May 31, 2026. This body of work is inspired by the jewels owned by legendary Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor (1932 - 2011) that were posthumously sold by her estate to support her AIDS Foundation. When she passed in 2011, the jewels underwent a multi-city exhibition world tour, with one of the destinations being the Pacific Design Center Gallery across the street from the West Hollywood Library. 15 years after the jewels were exhibited, Harper’s solo exhibition heralds a full circle moment that provides a re-imagined painterly outlook on seven of the most important gem types from Taylor’s collection.  

I spoke with Harper on a Zoom call to learn more about her artistic tribute to Elizabeth Taylor and how these fit within her broader interests in art and gemology.

S.P. Harper, Emerald, c. 2018 - 2020, oil, acrlyic, and mixed media on canvas. 30 x 30 x 2 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

What compelled you to pursue your Angel of Compassion series?

I have a natural interest in gemstones and in that exploration I had the inkling, or I had a suggestion, that I should research the gem collection of Elizabeth Taylor. For instance there is the Krupp Diamond or the Burton-Taylor Cartier Diamond, so I knew that they existed but I wanted to explore it and contain it as one collection [for this series]. 

Because of the biographical references embedded in each image, is it accurate to describe these as portraits of Liz Taylor? 

Yes, I do! There are images gathered from a book of Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels [My Love Affair with Jewels, 2002] and there is the other one by the photographer Catherine Opie, her 700 Nimes Rd. book [2015], which is Taylor’s residence that she photographed around the time of her passing, so I used those for reference. Some of those images in my paintings are from those books. We wanted to mix in as much of Elizabeth Taylor, the gems, and also my very big, graphic symbols representative of the different gem types in the collection.

S.P. Harper, Ruby, oil, acrylic, and mixed media on canvas. 30 x 30 x 2 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

How did you determine which areas or segments of Elizabeth Taylor’s life would go into each painting (for example, the choice of Taylor as Cleopatra in the Ruby painting)? Are these 7 paintings supposed to read in sequential order?

There are seven paintings that are focusing on the most important gems of her collection. They are roughly chronological and so we hung them in order. The first one is called Diamond and it symbolizes the white diamonds that she owned. The start of her collection began with Michael Todd and they had traveled extensively for his movie that he won an award for, Around the World in 80 Days, and so they were in Paris promoting that film. While they were in Paris, he took her shopping to the Place Vendôme where he bought her those chandelier diamond earrings, also a tiara because she was his queen. When they traveled, it was all costume jewelry. But when they got back to Beverly Hills, Todd replaced all of the costume jewelry with real gems. So that’s what starts the collection, the Michael Todd story is kind of the start of it all. 

She did receive an Asscher cut diamond ring, I think it was 4 carats, from her first husband Nicky Hilton when she was 17 years old … but that marriage lasted only one year, they say that he beat her, had a gambling addiction, and it ended. But yes, each of these paintings allude to different moments in her career and roles she was known for, like with the mention of her role as Cleopatra in the Ruby painting.

Since these are mixed media works, could you please explain your process as to how these images materialized?

The mixed media backgrounds are completely acrylic, collaged mixed media. Her photographs have been gessoed with clear gesso three times because it makes them archival so they won’t fade. It protects them and gives a surface that is easy for me to paint on top of with acrylic, but I could never get that really solid bright white, I have to use oil. You can’t put acrylics over oil, only acrylics on the bottom layers, so those bottom layers are acrylic and collage. The large graphic is painted on top with acrylic and then the white is oil. The diamond dust is in a medium, which is kind of transparent. 

S.P. Harper, Cartier Diamond, c. 2018 - 2020, diamond dust, oil, acrylic, and mixed media on canvas. 30 x 30 x 2 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

And the part with Elizabeth Taylor’s face, the verism is so accurate, you completely captured her profile. Because of these being mixed media works, did you render her face through the oil and acrylic?

Yes, that’s part of the mixed media. If you study her face there, it’s an actual reproduction from the two books that I cited earlier. My graphic symbol of each of the gems is my own original representation based off of what I’m known for in my previous series. 

Where do you source diamond dust? It seems like an uncommon material for painters to work with as part of their practice, so I can’t imagine it’s something you can easily acquire from an art supply store.

That was from eBay! There’s not really a market for that kind of material, certainly not an Amazon product. It’s kind of like the Wild West finding these types of things.

Installation view of S.P. Harper's Angel of Compassion series in the West Hollywood Library. Image courtesy of the artist.
 

What led to the West Hollywood Library serving as the venue for the exhibition of your paintings?

The West Hollywood Library really promotes the visual arts. West Hollywood City Hall has a huge budget. It’s so lovely and wonderful. There are different places where you can submit works, but their programming existed long before I even submitted this series to them. Through a connection, I found out about Mike Shea (arts administrator). He created the diorama for the show and undertook the fact-checking along with so much writing for this exhibition. 

Have you ever previously devoted a series of gem paintings to a single person in the manner of Elizabeth Taylor and the Angel of Compassion? And do you plan on taking this further with another subject in the future?

People have asked me that before and they sometimes inquire “Who are you going to do next?” It didn’t go there for me, this started out as a series of seven paintings about seven gems. And then the realization that Elizabeth owned them set in. It became her story and I just began to love her, respect her, and understand her more. There are four or five books - biographies, I suppose - on Elizabeth Taylor and I read all of them. There is even one whole book on her relationship with Monty Clift [Montgomery Clift]. It really took me into that world, but I’m not interested in doing celebrity gems. 

And if you don’t mind me asking, what are your upcoming projects?

I’m eco-centric, and so the gems are kind of the format, but I experiment in all kinds of ways to make something brilliant through paint or with 3D sculptural forms. So for my next project, I don’t think I’m going to go with a celebrity gem, but instead I want to work with a fabricator and do something very large-scale, that’s very intriguing to me. It’s going to be large, but it will be in a gem shape. Pasadena and all these cities [in Southern California] put out these grants and calls for large-scale, exterior installations. So this project will be solar-powered. Everything I make is for eco-centrics. 

But it’s funny because the Elizabeth Taylor series kind of took me on a different journey! 

S.P. Harper, Sapphire, c. 2018 - 2020, oil, acrylic, and mixed media on canvas. 30 x 30 x 2 inches. Image courtesy of the artist. 

As a painter, you appear to speak in the language of gems. Elizabeth Taylor, too, was a great lover of gems. Could this series of works be interpreted or perceived as you - S.P. Harper - being in a visual dialogue with Elizabeth Taylor?

Oh, I love that! Yes, I think she would approve. She had a love affair with gems, much as I do, and I think they are her muse. Like her, gems are my essence. She was very successful, so it had me thinking: Did she buy art? Hmm, I don’t think so. Did she buy homes all over the world? Well, she and Richard Burton lived on a boat for a while. So where did she put her money? I think it’s because she loved gems so much … her one husband Eddie Fisher was a weak character. She later met Richard Burton and he was a strong character. He liked gems as much as she did. So for both of them, it was part of their celebrity. Burton bought her the biggest gems!

You know, he went into debt for those gems. For instance the Cartier diamond, that was the biggest and it was about 68 carats … Cartier had outbid him at the auction and he lost his temper, he let everyone know that he had to have that gem … Gems were public relations for Taylor. 

Gems are valued for their inherent luster and beauty. Your paintings convey the magnitude of their brilliance through striking colors. Given Angel of Compassion’s connections to Elizabeth Taylor, could it also be said that these colorfully luminescent paintings have something of that Technicolor aesthetic that was used in many of the great Hollywood films of the 1950s & 1960s, of which Taylor was a part?

Oh yes, that is so true! My goal in my sculptures and paintings overall is to figure out how I can make them brilliant. Diamonds cast out a light, but there’s no electricity, no source. They’re from nature and they’re cut in a certain way. They project and could blind you! So that’s something I hoped to achieve through paint in this series similar to what you just described.

S.P. Harper, Yellow Diamond, c. 2018 - 2020, diamond dust, oil, acrylic, and mixed media on canvas. 30 x 30 x 2 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

As an artist who is firmly entrenched in the Los Angeles art scene and being native to the city, do you think it is inevitable for artists whose lives are closely attached there to eventually find themselves engaging with Hollywood as a subject, narrative, or theme? I ask this because I’ve noticed your work over the years has largely been in the direction of gemology as an abstraction, but now Elizabeth Taylor has become a new kind of subject - a larger-than-life persona forever associated with the Golden Age of Hollywood!

That’s a very interesting question, and I’m going to say that you can’t avoid it when you’re in Los Angeles! Yes, I do think it influences us, even the collectors are an influence, especially the celebrity collectors because they brought out a whole new kind of artist. You can’t help but be influenced by the entertainment industry. 

My interest in Elizabeth Taylor definitely led to the inception of the Angel of Compassion series, and I am forever grateful to have developed a greater appreciation for her because of it. WM