Liz Ainslie

Liz Ainslie is a painter living in Brooklyn, NY. Ainslie received an MFA from Tyler School of Art and a BFA from Alfred University. She has had solo exhibitions at Transmitter, BCB Fine Art, Airplane, Creon Gallery, and The Cohen Gallery at Alfred University. Her work has been included in group 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, Valentine, Lu Magnus, Vox Populi, and Gallerie Kritiku, Prague. Ainslie's work has been reviewed in Giornale Dell' Arte, ArtCal Zine, and The GC Advocate. Interviews with the artist can be found online at And Freedom For, Pencil in the Studio, #fffffff Walls, and Standard Interview. Ainslie was a visiting artist at Trestle Projects in 2018, faculty at School of the Alternative, 2017, a resident artist at Millay Colony for the Arts, 2011 and at Atlantic Center for the Arts, 2006. 

Interview with Liz Ainslie

Questions by Emily Burns

Hi Liz! Can you tell us a bit about what led you to pursue a path as an artist?
Curiosity and intuition lead me to pursue this path. I’m an only child, so I had a good amount of time to myself. Drawing was a way to envision other worlds and people, it felt like my fantasy world was coming to life. As I got older I found the drive to share it with others, even if they sometimes didn’t understand it. I was never the one who got the art award for the most realistic graphite rendition of a photograph, but I was always in the art room making something. At each step—art school, moving to New York—I didn’t exactly know what to expect, but I knew I wanted to be part of a larger art community, to insert my voice and learn from that experience.

Can you take us through the process of making a painting? Do you look at any references when working?I like to skew my connection to references, historical art, observations, with a bit of distance. I’ll visit the Met to look at Roman frescoes or medieval paintings, maybe take some notes. Then I make sketches that are compositionally related to those references. Or I’ll make observational sketches outdoors and leaf through them later with an eye for spatial oddities or repetitive marks. When it’s time to make the painting, I often leave my sketchbook a few feet away on the drafting table so I can only glance at it for a general impression. Then I start mixing colors. Color needs to be forward in my mind so that I’m present with the material and not being driven solely by my expectations and goals. 

How long have you been making work in the way that you are making now? How has it changed and what has stayed constant since grad school?
In grad school I stripped my work of so many things in order to build it back up. My thesis show felt like the primordial genesis of my current work. It was delightfully muddy and ugly, with little hints of brightness and light. From about 2011 to 2015 I was focused on straight lines and geometric forms. I liked the contrast of my energetic hand with the idea of a straight edge because it created an impossible environment of fuzzy delineations. I still enjoy honing and trapping my expressive side. I think I needed to develop that vocabulary so that I could eventually break my rules, incorporating the organic forms and landscape references I am using now. The strict parameters helped me develop an idiosyncratic hand that was particular to my energy and body. In 2015 I began to explore new organic references with the confidence to retain my particular way of moving the brush.

Your subject matter is inspired from drawings you make while in upstate New York during the summers. Is this the primary place from which you pull visual references? Can you tell us more about this location that makes it ideal for this process to unfold?
I think my time drawing upstate has been meaningful because I’m surrounded by trees and water with few distractions, so I’ll start to abandon my sense of self. I value the moments when I am not quite conscious of what my hand is drawing, when my eyes are taking in the scenery and my hand is translating it faster than my mind can analyze it. So when I make abstract paintings I try to get back to that moment, a reactionary, almost performative moment of seeing without questioning. I look at my drawings for reference, but I also try to remember the experience and use that too.

Your titles come from audio clips and snippets of speech—I often do the same thing, and I find that the words that arise from the environment are tied to the moment, and unique to the period of time in which the work is made. Do you find this to be the case for you as well? What do you hope the titles will bring to the experience of viewing the work?
I love that we share this similar methodology! In my case, it’s more tied to the puzzle of language. While listening to the radio or overhearing conversations in public, I'll occasionally find phrases that, loosened from their context, start to take on new meanings or double meanings—things like "very much in it," or "as it always." It's similar to the way my paintings take shape, only in that case I'm drawing on chunks of landscape or abbreviated visual references. I keep a list of possible titles and then apply them to the painting that seems to fit. It helps to create my own logic and parameters around difficult tasks like titling paintings. 

You have mentioned in a previous interview that drawing has been part of your life for a really long time. Can you elaborate on your relationship with drawing and how it relates to your painting practice?
Drawing is often an escape. Whether it was in the back seat of the car on road trips with my parents, or in school when the teacher wasn’t looking, it was a way to enter another world. I still feel that way when I draw in my sketchbook. It’s still a furtive space where I can surprise myself, let things get weird. Then later I can pick and choose what will be interesting in a painting. It can sometimes take 10 years for me to understand how to use a drawing. 

You have written that you have certain rituals when you begin a painting. What types of rituals do you still use, and how do they support your process?
If I’m having a little trouble getting started, I like to clean my studio and organize particular paintings on the wall that might lead into my next work. I need to listen to the right music (punk, hip hop, new wave) because it’s good to move and dance while thinking about paintings. Dancing and movement, in general, affect the energy of the painting, especially at the beginning. I also have paper tacked to my wall where I write ideas. It could be very constructive, like “make an all-pink painting” or it could be conceptual like “remove the morality from your work.” It’s good to get into the zone of painting logic and leave the practical world behind for a little while.

Color is obviously important to you. Are there specific references for the color combinations in your paintings?
I like to collect color information. I go through periods of taking snapshots of buildings and objects on the street looking for surprising combinations of colors, materials and shadows. My gouache works on paper are an important way to work out color relationships quickly. I also draw from my memories to find color associations that become starting points. I utilize associations like “that olive color of 1970’s refrigerators” or “the purple/orange/grey color of the sky in the winter when it mixes with street lights.” It’s challenging and exciting to dance around my associations with certain combinations. Pink, green and blue pastels come with the baggage of my 1980’s childhood.

Can you tell us about your studio? What do you need to be productive there?
I’m lucky to have a studio inside my loft apartment where I can shut the door and be alone. In the past I’ve had studios that lacked light, so now I am grateful to be able to zone out and look out the window. To be productive, I just need to have music and snacks and enough paint so that I won’t hesitate to cover the canvas and then maybe scrape it all off again. I also have my drafting table where I can switch to working on small drawings and works on paper. If I’m working on larger oil paintings I have two glass palettes for color mixing.

Can you tell us about how to navigate the need to either stay focused and leverage distraction as an asset while working?
Having a studio in your home can be distracting, so it is really important to keep the studio sort of sacred and separate from the rest of your space. When I was younger I didn’t always have a door on my studio, but I kept it arranged in such a way that the objects of daily life could not enter that zone. Now when I close that studio door I do feel I have entered a different mental space. At the same time I don’t beat myself up for needing to take a break or step away from the work. I think it’s useful to take walks in the middle of studio sessions. If I put my headphones on, I can stay in that headspace during the walk and then reenter the studio with new energy. 

Who are some of the artists you look at most often?
I keep going back to renderings of interiors and mountains in medieval or pre-Renaissance paintings from Siena by Duccio and Giovanni di Paolo. The skewed perspective in religious and portrait paintings from that period blew me away when I first visited Italy in grad school. Louise Bourgeois is very important in the direct nature of her drawings and the surprising variety of forms in her sculptures. I keep thinking about the late work of Dubuffet, the large paintings combine the gesture of drawing with a painting eye. As for contemporary work, I love the unapologetic wildness of Joanne Greenbaum’s recent show at Rachel Uffner.

You are currently part of a two-person exhibition titled “Unearth” at Sardine in Brooklyn, featuring your paintings and sculptures by Stacy Fisher. Congrats! Can you tell us a bit about the work in the show?
I have been excited about Stacy’s work for many years, ever since I saw it at Regina Rex, so it was fun to collaborate with her and Sardine’s director Lacey Fekishazy to pair the works. We both have a very specific relationship to color and tactility. There are moments of humor and mystery in the awkwardness of our forms. I like showing with sculptors because they tend to approach the exhibition space differently. Stacy knew how to leave poignant breathing room between our works and utilize Sardine’s shelves in a buoyant way. We thought Unearth made sense for the title because it can take on a double meaning: both our works contain traces of something unearthed, as in excavated, but also un-earth, as in “not earth”--a vision of the natural world altered through artifice and human design. 

What’s up next for you?
I’m getting ready for another two-person show with Evan Galbicka at Moisturizer Gallery in Gainesville, Florida curated by Lisa Iglesias and Des Bassil. Lisa and I first met at the Atlantic Center for the Arts back in 2006, so it will be really fun to get back together around this show and visit the School of Art and Art History at the University of Florida where she teaches.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us!
Thank you for the insightful questions. I love Maake!

To find out more about Liz and her work, check out her website.