Elisabeth Condon at Pulse New York

At PULSE NY, Emerson Dorsch presents a new series of paintings, Notes from Shanghai. Elisabeth Condon made this series while at a residency there in 2014, and the intensity of multi-sensorial experience in urban China shines in these canvases.

Ms. Condon’s recent paintings look as if they are blooming into the canvas. She is mistress of the liquid behaviors of paint. Stain or watercolor tends to pool out and into the fabric of the linen. Oil and acrylic, sometimes with mineral elements, tends to have more viscosity, like honey. These paints have intense color saturation, which she exploits, especially in Ethereal Body, singing in 100% magenta and violet.

She began painting in this fashion in 2003, when she started regularly commuting between studios in Brooklyn, NY and Tampa, FL. The long

commute made her identify with the extended journeys in Chinese scrolls, spurring a concerted study of Chinese academic painting, also known as the Literati tradition, with masters of the form in South Florida and New Jersey. Elisabeth quickly decided that, since she is not Chinese, she’d have to build a new kind of painting, finding a way to apply Chinese principles to the kind of painting she knew and loved, American painting since 1950. With the scroll paintings came a way to present landscape details drawn from her travels within abstract tableaux.

The fact that Condon's Shanghai paintings have Chinese ink in them, along with color ink, acrylic and glitter, fits the site of their making and also for the trajectory of Condon’s work. The thinning of material is due to the use of ink, evoking watercolors and ink painting. But there is balance. Offsetting the watery thinness of ink and acrylic is the glitter, like marshes or shores.

Chinese academic painting, also known as the Literati tradition, is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Among the tenets is balance and harmony, and these permeate the values of Chinese society at large, even today. Reflecting on her time in Shanghai, Elisabeth writes, “The harmony stressed in Chinese culture is so soothing it becomes a little bit kitsch, but joyous expression in painting is actually hard won. It is the opposite of zombie formalism, as full presence. A spontaneous, joyful painting reflects freedom and liquidity that unites focus and release. Like the wacky Shanghai skyline these paintings are over the top but also note the dark rich tones of river barges after 11 PM when all goes quiet after the light show.”