Elisabeth Condon

Condon's first major public commission was at the Tampa Airport in 2017. In 2018 Condon installed a permanent public work at the Astoria–Ditmars Boulevard station, commissioned by MTA Arts & Design. The piece, entitled Urban Idyll, consists of thirty-six laminated glass panels that are translations of elements from her paintings. The theme is the Tree of Life, and it features birds, leaves, and flowers. Reflecting Astoria's cinematic history, the long, linear compositions recall sheet music or film frames.

In the wake of her 2014 residency in Shanghai, Condon has been embracing imagery that is considered feminine or kitsch such as flowers and birds. In Shanghai she recognized the importance of decoration to the urban landscape and classical Chinese painting.

Public Collections include: Art in Embassies Program (2008), Girls Club Collection (2008), JP Morgan Chase Art Collection (2015 and 2017), Martha and Jim Sweeny Collection of Contemporary Prints by American Women at Museum of Fine Arts, Saint Petersburg, FL (2015), Tampa Museum of Art (2016), and Perez Art Museum Miami (2017).

Selected Grants 2007 Pollock Krasner; 2008 Florida Individual Artist Fellowship; 2015 NY PULSE Prize (booth Emerson Dorsch); 2015 New York Studio School Mercedes Matter Alumni Award; 2018 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Program Grant

Born in Los Angeles, Condon was drawn to Asian culture and aesthetics filtered through home decor, Disney, and fantasy television. Through her travels and studies, Condon has become deeply influenced by ancient Chinese painting and philosophy, as well as the experience of living in modern Asian cities.  In 2004, on a residency in Taiwan, she began to practice Chinese painting techniques, which emphasize variety in texture and inflection, as well as improvisation.

Condon has exhibited extensively in the US and internationally since 1998.

Elisabeth Condon was born in Los Angeles.  She completed her BFA in Painting at Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in 1986, as well as studying at UCSD for 1 year and UCLA for 2 years.  She completed her MFA in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990 before moving to Brooklyn in 1992. She has taught extensively in Florida, and travelled widely for research and residencies. She curates exhibitions about topics that are relevant to her own practice, including paint pouring and contemporary reinterpretations of classical Asian painting. Condon has also run an art criticism blog, Raggedy Ann's Foot, since 2007.

Condon draws inspiration from a wide variety of source material, from the 1970s LA glam rock scene to children's picture books to news photographs from the Iraq war.  Critic Edward Gomez comments: “Her interests and influences are as diverse and unpredictable as her compositions are well-balanced and complete, even inevitable.” The connections among her subjects often seem tenuous, but Condon is able to draw out unexpected similarities. “In lesser hands that might be a recipe for disaster" critic Van Siclen notes. "But Condon makes it work, deftly fusing the free-flowing, nonlinear perspective of Chinese painting with the free-flowing, nonlinear logic of the Seuss books.”

Elisabeth Condon (b. 1959) is a contemporary American painter who combines natural imagery, the built environment, and abstraction in her free-flowing synthetic landscapes.