Lisa Scadron

About

Growing up immersed in the magnificent Sonoran Desert profoundly influenced my internal identity and aesthetic. The landscape’s color and vastness informed how I saw and felt the environment around me and I learned to visualize my surroundings in terms of shapes, colors and compositions. For me, making art is about the simple and sensory pleasure of discovering what materials can do and how I can mold them into something beautiful. My artwork often resembles or invokes landscapes, geological, terrestrial or planetary formations, and sometimes cellular or atomic imagery. I build abstract mixed media paintings by excavating into cumulative layers of acrylic paint, metallic leaf and varied mixed media, like burlap, wire mesh and venetian plaster, to find and form depth and texture. Sometimes applying as many as ten layers over a period of time to a canvas or panel, I use palette knives, old kitchen utensils and other tools to mine these layers for hidden colors and latent elements. I navigate the unknown territory of a work in progress by playing with the materials—exploring “mistakes” and “tangents"—until the media coalesces into works that are at once ethereal and earthy.