Born on November 28, 1967 in New Haven, Connecticut, Izenour graduated with Distinction from Swathmore College with a BA in Studio Art and Art History in 1990. She then continued her education at Yale University, School of Art, completing her MFA in Painting/Printmaking in 1993.

Izenour writes about her work: "I have always responded to paintings and the act of painting on an intuitive and visceral level. I love the formal sophistication of an intelligently constructed image- the sheer beauty of the painted surface, it textural richness, color and abstract geometric and spatial relationships. In my painting there is an aspiration of evoking an emotive, or contemplative experience, which in some manner heightens or alters our normal perceptions of the world. I think that as I consistently return to the realtively simple and humble objects around me, I am attempting to describe something that is somehow more real than normality, to define something which is indisputable.

"In many respects, however, my work has always been formally preoccupied with relatively abstract concepts of the picture plane. The visceral appeal of the physicality of paint, mark, and color, and the emphasis on flat, two-dimensional shape and graphic line have consistently played a prominent role in my work. I have always been concerned with implying a rational spatial context, i.e., a realistic progression in space from foreground to background, and simultaneously undermining this reality within the same image.

"These ambiguous spatial situations are created through the manipulation, even exploitation, of such conventions as: renaissance one-point perspective, the use of strange incidental view-points, close-up, cropped or multiple perspectives, the emphasis on mark and the materiality of the paint, and tonal and coloristic tricks for evoking or denying space and atmosphere. The tension which exists betwwen these two poles - a rational, ordered, and more classical position and an exaggerated, baroque expression - has always fascinated me, and it is a coherent expression of some sort of a reconcilliation between these two extreme states, which I seem compelled to capture."