Elisabeth Condon: New Works

A mid-career painter, Elisabeth Condon makes paintings that nearly always begin with poured paint and grow to reflect the legacy of abstract expressionists, 5th century Chinese landscapes, North American interior décor patterns, and her personal history in landscapes and décor. Her recent paintings grow from her latest obsession with the lattice pattern that permeated wallpapers and textiles in her mother’s house. Her lattice paintings play out a reckoning with the legacy of American middle class taste on her own artistic maturation. The fight can turn awkward and sometimes ugly, as she grapples with the restrictions of that very particular grid. In the newest paintings, the lattice motif has grown organic, like a vine or a fungal net that is arising from decay to live again. After a year of being homebound, the notion that the patterns on the walls would come alive to smother the house’s inhabitants does not seem far-fetched.