Arranging the Rainbow

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by Lisa Congdon

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Artist Statement

I am a self taught painter and photographer. Many of my paintings and photographs are arrangements of objects, both real and imagined. When I was a child I began collecting things, and by the time I was in my twenties, I was spending weekends perusing flea markets and antique malls looking for small treasures. Simultaneously, from the time I was about eight years old, I developed an interest in arranging and displaying my collections. In hindsight, I realize that my need to collect and arrange were born of the need to both find comfort and create order in a world that felt unwieldy and sometimes out of control. I enjoy the experience of taking everyday objects that might seem boring on their own (old erasers, bread tags, boxes of staples, matches) and creating beautiful, textured visual imagery by clustering those objects together on an imaginary grid, usually by color. My interest in arranging things neatly has been a consistent theme in my work since I began painting, drawing and taking pictures in my thirties. My paintings often elevate mundane, ubiquitous, sometimes obsolete objects into conversation with symbols from nature and the supernatural. I am particularly interested in eliminating complexity and detail in my subject matter, and in stripping things down to their essential forms.

Why We Love It

"Arranging the Rainbow is a carefully composed array of seemingly mundane bits and bobs—erasers, bread bag tags, pencil sharpeners—transformed into a delightful piece of eye candy thanks to Lisa’s deft ability to coax brilliance out of the ordinary. Part of her ongoing Collections series, Lisa built this piece from her ever-growing (and already vast!) collection of collections. If you’re like me, these are the sorts of items that usually end up in a hopelessly jumbled, overfull junk drawer that’s more of a guilt trip than a font of inspiration. Not Lisa though! Artistic abilities aside, Lisa also happens to be one of the most organized people I’ve ever met, so all these aforementioned bits and bobs are obsessively organized, resulting in a sort of next-level palette that goes beyond mere color to include shape and dimension as well" ... Read more from Jen Bekman on the blog!

Details

+$10 of each print sold will be donated to Brave Trails, an amazing organization and summer camp supporting LGBTQ youth and families.
+This edition is final sale and not eligible for discounts or returns.

Medium:

Innova Fibaprint Warm Cotton Gloss

Lisa Congdon

Fine artist, illustrator and author Lisa Congdon is best known for her colorful and spirited paintings and drawings. Over the past decade, she has worked for clients around the world including MoMA, Comme des Garçons, Crate and Barrel, REI, Harvard University, Chronicle Books, and Simon & Schuster Publishing, among many others. She is the author of eight books, including the starving-artist-myth-smashing Art Inc: The Essential Guide to Building Your Career as an Artist and her latest book, Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic. She was named one of 40 Women Over 40 to Watch... Read More
in 2015 and she is featured in the 2017 book, 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
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