ELISABETH CONDON
NOTES ON A LANDSCAPE (IN REPOSE) & THE MEAL, 2023

LOCATION:
University of South Florida, Tampa
Judy Genshaft Honors College, café space

 

DETAILS:
Notes on a Landscape (in Repose), 2023
acrylic on linen
48” x 384”

The Meal, 2023
acrylic on linen
48” x 144”

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Elisabeth Condon’s two large-scale landscape paintings, Notes on a Landscape (in Repose) and The Meal envelop viewers in lush fields of brilliant flora and fauna. Layering the historical legacy of ancient Chinese scroll painting with 20th-century Color Field and Pattern and Decoration art movements, Condon’s works compress and expand what she calls “liquid space,” conjuring fluidity across time, place, and thought. 

For these works, Condon draws from her artistic interest in patterns and motifs from North American interior décor. Inspired by the Honors College’s function as a central hub for interdisciplinary and collaborative research and teaching activities on the Tampa campus, Condon references the ancient Tree of Life design, which depicts various stages of botanical growth. Spanning historical ages and cultures, this symbolic pattern is a metaphor for eternal life and the interconnection among our planet’s diverse life forms. Condon uses this motif as a guide to reflect on the site’s function as a space for students’ learning, transformation, and development on their journey through the educational phases of their collegiate experience. 

View or download project brochure pdf (10MB)

 

ARTIST'S BIO:

Elisabeth Condon (b. 1959, Los Angeles, CA) is a contemporary painter who incorporates imagery from the natural world with patterns and motifs of North American interior décor to create fluid, abstracted landscapes that transcend time and place. Using bold, vivid pigments poured onto canvas, Condon’s layered painting techniques contrast gestural, organic forms with rendered geometric patterns to create lush, dream-like spaces that invite the viewer to wander through her imagined space. 

Condon’s work is in the collections of Tampa Museum of Art, Perez Art Museum Miami, Hudson River Museum, the United States Foundations of Art in Embassies Program Beijing, and numerous private collections throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. She is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, and a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship. Condon earned degrees from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (MFA) and Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design, Los Angeles (BFA). From 2003 to 2014, she was an Assistant and Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing in the School of Art and Art History at the University of South Florida. Condon lives and works in New York, NY and Tampa, FL.

This project was funded by Florida’s Art in State Buildings Program.