LIZ ATLAS

My work is about an off-kilter, intuitively unfolding narrative of color/shape/line/gesture, in which divergent perspectives attempt to co-exist in the same time and space—the ever present tension of reality being one thing, and another, and the attempt to hold both in one moment.

In broad strokes, this duality can be seen in how the work is always about the abstract engagement of formal elements, while, at the same time, I welcome the freely emerging, evocative associations that are conjured up in the process.

Within a framework of formal concerns, I rely on a painterly vocabulary to break with the calm, expected stasis, allowing for the quirky, asymmetrical, imbalanced surprises. Irregular, awkward shape and line, softened edges and dynamic gesture engage with partially hidden layers of an earlier history of shapes and lines—all contributing to this sense of reality as one thing and another.