Elisabeth Condon
Florida Contemporary exhibit

Florida Contemporary, organized by Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum, aims to recognize great artistic talent springing from all corners of the state. This invitational exhibition features the work of three distinguished women artists worthy of national attention: Elisabeth Condon (b. 1959), Lilian Garcia-Roig (b. 1966) and Carrie Sieh (b. 1978). Based in Tampa, Tallahassee and Miami respectively, these artists have widely exhibited their art both nationally and internationally. The exhibition contextualizes their interpretations of artistic traditions using various materials and techniques within general contemporary artistic trends, and it also highlights their individual artistic concerns and merits.

These three artists’ creations push artistic limits as they explore the potential of materials and techniques, as well as emotional and cerebral landscapes.

A recipient of numerous national grants, including a 2018 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant, Elisabeth Condon employs a level of abstraction and figuration that defies straightforward interpretation. She does so while simultaneously referencing and breaking away from Modernist abstraction and revealing her admiration for traditional Chinese ink painting.

More about the exhibit HERE

Interview with Elisabeth Corden
Miami ShoutOUt

Elisabeth Condon. Photo Kale Roberts

Hi Elisabeth, how do you think about risk?

Risk is a metric of commitment, containing life force within its demand to leap into the unknown. Returning to school in LA after a hiatus of hanging out at nightclubs, choosing SAIC’s multidisciplinary program in Chicago for my MFA, moving to New York because that’s where I wanted to live, accepting a professorship at the University of South Florida, and traveling to China for six months at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel are risks that have rewarded me with cultural and aesthetic influences that shape and inspire my work.

In early 2019 I stopped everything I was doing in the studio to devote eight months painting on rice paper with calligraphy ink. Suspending color for black ink felt like an enormous risk. While I wanted to understand ink and brush painting more directly, I wondered if learning a language I could never fully understand was a form of cultural co-optation.

In New York I live four blocks from the Highline, making the Whitney and Highline our first destinations after espresso and avocado toast at the corner bistro, Malaparte. Take the A to Wave Hill’s gardens and galleries in Riverdale to draw majestic trees on the front lawn and the tropical plants in the greenhouse. Visit Westbeth Gallery in the historic building where I live, as well as The Clemente Solo Velez Center for Art, where I work. Galleries everywhere, on the Lower East Side, Chelsea, Midtown, and Bushwick. New York is a walking town, filled with surprises everywhere, so it’s impossible to go wrong

Read the entire interview HERE