Elisabeth Condon - Abstraction of the World

My paintings integrate nature, décor, and abstraction within stylized landscapes. Their vocabulary of flowers, lattice, and poured color materializes from various sumi-e, Abstract Expressionist and Color Field paint applications.

References to vintage 1960s and ‘70s wallpaper and textile patterns from childhood represent a time in America when, much like now, religious conservatism and human rights collide. Now the cheerful patterns are released in flows of color. Dissolving figure and ground relationships, they cultivate a "butterfly perspective" moving over and through space simultaneously.

Gestures made at speed, adding calligraphy ink to acrylic paint, and allowing empty passages to infuse breath into the composition are elements I bring from ink practice to painting. Lately I've been pushing both for and against the influence of ink, inventing flowers as I paint. Flower and pattern merge, mirroring the the urban landscape where these painting were made.

About the Artist:

Elisabeth Condon is known for paintings that overlap natural and built environments. Linking scroll painting with the decorative wallpapers of her childhood home, Condon incorporates their motifs in paintings and public art works such as Urban Idyll, commissioned by MTA Art & Design Percent for Art for the NYCT Astoria-Ditmars Blvd. Station in Queens.

Condon's paintings are held in the collections of the Tampa Museum of Art, Perez Art Museum Miami, Hudson River Museum, United States Embassy Beijing, and numerous private collections throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. She is recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, and a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship. Condon's residencies include the Swatch Art Peace Hotel Shanghai, UCross, Montello, and Morris Graves Foundations, Carizozzo AIR, Wave Hill Winter Workspace Residency, Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation Residency Program.

Condon holds degrees from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (MFA) and Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design, Los Angeles (BFA). For eleven years, she held tenure as Associate Professor at the University of South Florida Tampa. Born in Los Angeles, Condon now lives and works in New York, NY and Tampa, FL.