Elisabeth Condon (born 1959)[1] is a contemporary American painter who combines natural imagery, the built environment, and abstraction in her free-flowing synthetic landscapes.

The landscapes depicted are both themselves altered by human interaction, and the ensuing paintings feel like idiosyncratic records of Condon's mind and her imaginings of the space.

"[3] Viewing Condon's paintings, imbued as they are with this intense personal quality, consequently feels "a bit like reading her diary: strangely disorienting at first, then disarming and familiar.

It is evident both in the range and unlikeliness of the source material she uses, and in her final compositions, which feel like odd remixes of painting styles that combine into something wholly new.

Condon draws inspiration from a wide variety of source material, from the 1970s LA glam rock scene[5] to children's picture books to news photographs from the Iraq war.

[8] She has command of a wide range of styles, from traditional landscape techniques to Chinese brush painting to patterning borrowed from graphic design, which makes "for multi-layered, exuberant work.

[10]  And she borrows elements from art movements from disparate times and places, from ancient China to the French Informel to Color Field painting.

"[12] This mix of styles and influences is distinctly postmodern and expressive of the current technological environment, where input of ideas, news, and images from around the world is fast-paced and unceasing.

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.

Whereas the western painting tradition values contrast and opposition, Condon seeks a delicate balance between fullness and emptiness in her compositions.

[8] Condon often begins a composition with pouring acrylic or oil paint, so that the kinetic quality of the material creates unexpected forms and effects.

Condon's pours are at the intersection of crossed axes, one between image and shape, the other between pattern and gesture, offering the potential in subsequent layers to transform into any of them.

"[16] This accidental, transformational, action-based method contributes to a sense energy and directness to her work: "The dynamism of Condon's all-over compositions feels self-propelled, and it's easy to imagine them stretching far beyond their borders into an endless, gyrating flow of birds, plants and streams of luscious, electric, energized color.

"[15] Her landscapes feature references to places as far away as Taiwan, Beijing, and Australia, as well as her native California and homes in Florida and Manhattan.

[19]  She reconsidered her mother's "obsessive decorating" of her childhood home, an aesthetic that had at one time been only a symbol of her family's stifling conservatism, and transformed it into an important element of her work.

[13] With their domestic references, sumptuous colors, floral imagery,[20] and use of pretty materials like glitter, her paintings engage with the world's disdain for a certain gender, class, and aesthetic taste.

Like other Pattern and Decoration Artists, Condon reclaims her personal experience and love of beauty, asserting the importance and potential for intellectual rigor in such work.

The decorative here in Condon's painting serves as a formal device and a marker of "feminine" identity asserting itself against a culture of reactionary values.

She has participated in over 20 residencies and fellowships in Beijing, Taiwan, Shanghai, Spain, and the UK, along with locations across the United States, notably the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH; the Everglades National Park; the Grand Canyon National Park; Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY; the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT; and Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists Residency in Saugatuck, MI Selected Grants 2007 Pollock Krasner; 2008 Florida Individual Artist Fellowship; 2015 NY PULSE Prize (booth Emerson Dorsch);[26] 2015 New York Studio School Mercedes Matter Alumni Award; 2018 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Program Grant; and a Joan Mitchell Center Residency in 2024.