When we look at a representational picture, some queues help orient us inside the illusion. I find it exciting to play with these queues in an abstract context. How do we perceive space when gravity is subverted? What happens when color disrupts structure?
A friend told me that one of my paintings looked like a stage. My paintings do set up an artificial space where the characters can live by impossible rules. I’ve developed environments with skewed perspective and impossible scale shifts where abstract components interact. Though my environments are synthetic, the relationships draw on the natural world. Horizon lines, foregrounds, and chasms come from real-world observations. My plein air watercolors and architectural photos serve as source material for my abstract paintings.
Mixing paint is an alchemy to me. The first colors I lay down become a catalyst for the rest of the painting. Whatever horizon I have drawn can be counteracted with a shift in value or temperature. The space becomes a dynamic puzzle-like discovery.
Liz Ainslie is a painter living in Brooklyn, NY. Ainslie received an MFA from Tyler School of Art in 2004 and a BFA from Alfred University in 2001. She has had solo exhibitions at Transmitter Gallery and Airplane in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Creon Gallery in Manhattan and The Cohen Gallery at Alfred University. Her work has been included in shows at Station Independent Projects, SARDINE, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Orgy Park, Ground Floor Gallery, Outlet Fine Art, Centotto, Parallel Art Space, Small Black Door, and A.I.R. Gallery, Vox Populi, BCB Fine Art, and Gallerie Kritiku, Prague, Czech Republic. Her work has been reviewed or featured in Art Maze Mag, Maake Magazine, Giornale Dell' Arte, ArtCal Zine, and The GC Advocate. Interviews with the artist can be found online at Maake Magazine, Pencil in the Studio, and #fffffff Walls. Ainslie is a Co-director of Underdonk gallery in Brooklyn, was a visiting artist at Trestle Projects in 2018, a faculty resident at School of the Alternative, 2017, a resident artist at Millay Colony for the Arts, 2011 and at Atlantic Center for the Arts, 2006.
