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Elisabeth Condon
Post #1086 • November 13, 2007, 9:47 AM • 9 Comments
Elisabeth Condon, friend of the blog, friend of Supergirl and myself, and fellow Dorsch artist, has won a well-deserved Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Huzzah!
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November 13, 2007, 8:42 PM
Hans, I hope Lee Krasner would be interested. Her works on paper were just exhibited at Robert Miller. What a curious show. It seemed incomplete, save for two beautiful works that hovered between indistinctness and utterly clarity, using simply one color of paint. I understood her aim, to make something she hadn't seen, with all the tools available: and endeavor to visually comprehend the world in which I live and travel, which is flattened yet rife with multiple applications.
Tonight I had a critique with the critique group. 15 or so artists were in my studio. Some felt the paintings were intense, overly - conscious--that the watercolors were more inviting, allowed more reflective, empty space--not so pyrotechnic. Others enjoyed, even savored the combination of abstraction and representation. Something that came out of the discussion was my desire to break all limits in art making, even my own. For some, this is soup; for others, pushing through.
It ain't over till it's over.
Franklin, thank you for the feature, what a surprise!
Others, I welcome your thoughts.
3.
November 14, 2007, 6:34 AM
I've enjoyed looking at Elizabeth's work at Dorsch Gallery.I look forward to exhibiting with her at Breaking Waves. Congats on the grant!!!
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November 14, 2007, 11:41 AM
George, thank you, I love your work and am honored.
It would be interesting to hear how people set limits for themselves in the studio, which is an issue I think about a lot. It is Modernist tradition to reduce information in order to distill a unique vision. Barry Schwabsky's recent review of Paul Jenkins in one of the art mags takes Jenkins to task for allowing so much in his work, not editing.
What do people think about this issue in their own artistic practice, in other artists? Is less really more?
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November 14, 2007, 11:52 AM
An established artist once told me that, "Nothing is neutral." I happen to agree with this.
Regardless of how little, or how much, is in a work, it all has to be accounted for.
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November 14, 2007, 4:14 PM
Jenkins used staining for the most part. You can't edit staining. You can only do less in the first place.
7.
November 14, 2007, 5:08 PM
The MoCA Jacksonville has a strange Jenkins. it has some beautiful stain blooms and a shelf-like smear of paint (troweled on) and a strange sandy textured area in the top corner. The trowel looks like an edit, the first I've seen in a work by his.
Karin Davie-another painter who works with one-shots...
8.
November 15, 2007, 8:35 AM
I finally had a chance to look up Jenkins. Prismatic colors almost never work for me and I detect a lack of urgency behind the splashing. I feel the same way about Sam Francis.
Less is more when it enables the artist's inspiration and needlessly limiting when it doesn't. Good design is the act of removing everything that need not be there. But sometimes a lot of things need to be there.
9.
November 15, 2007, 11:24 AM
Can I quote you?! Sometimes there needs to be a lot there..
Jenkins is a real hit or miss. I agree the overall effect, like Sam F, can be lackluster. First saw them in the Paul Mazursky film "Unmarried Woman;" considered him kitsch but never forgot those paintings. Since then that whole Paris school, pre-Action abstraction letting the paint do the work, interest me for their focus on accident. Then there's Chinese scrolls, which contain everything and almost nothing. I especially love the Yuan Dynasty scrolls of Wang Meng, who crams it all in: pattern in every way: and they are gorgeous. The abundance of detail seems essential to conveying the feeling of being small in a huge and brilliant world.
1.
Hans
November 13, 2007, 12:51 PM
My congratulations ! But, what terrible paintings... it looks like cooking a soup, I add water and salt, some potatoes, some macaroni and, whop, its art ;-) What would Lee Krasner think ?