Lauren Lipinski Eisen

These works investigate the visual portrayal of separate moments in time combined into single images; unified views are divided into sections representing various stages of time sequences. The composite images present a series of individual impressions, each one spontaneously capturing a particular stage of development or memory facet, arranged into geometric sections created by an underlying linear grid. Each distinct area represents a fleeting, individual snapshot of time, while the enduring geometry provides a sequential structure for the transient forms to relate within.

My work explores the relationships between landscape, architecture, agriculture, horticulture, and other aspects of industry that affect native plant and animal life. References to these subjects are integrated into the surface of the paintings as dimensional collage elements. The process of encaustic painting allows a multilayered method of investigating these themes, using a combination of beeswax and resin to suspend and preserve fading life forms. In the encaustic medium, I embed fallen branches, stray seed pods, remains of insects, and other organic materials. The delicate and translucent nature of encaustic provides a natural substrate to showcase the fragility of these subjects in their various stages of life.

This series of layered paintings investigates the visual merging of separate moments in time into single images. Oil and cold wax paper impressions are collaged onto wooden panels, combined with encaustic techniques to create dramatic value contrast and depth in imagery juxtaposing interior psychological spaces and observed exterior landscapes. The translucent sectioning signifies the overlapping and fleeting glimpses of the landscape that are experienced through a windshield or window of a vehicle while traveling through the landscape; the layers of encaustic wax suggest an ethereal, cloudy quality evocative of memory and other intangible realms of the mind.

In Southeastern Colorado and Northern New Mexico, there occurs a unique and very specific variety of color in the landscape that persists in my memory long after traveling the highways in the region. Openings between patches of faded pale-yellow roadside grasses reveal alternating shades of green and blue-green crops and cover crops that rotate throughout the seasons. As the miles pass by during my road trips through this region, occasional dots of deep orange plant matter flash in between the short forms of blue-grey sagebrush and dark fractal spires of aging cottonwood trees. This series of paintings investigates the layering of these color memories to capture a shifting sense of time and place signifying the Southwest region.

This series utilizes layered imagery to depict the reconstruction of memory fragments from different time periods of one place. Representational images are nestled as a series of gradually fading memories, from recent moments of clarity to more ambiguous, darkened, forgotten images. This reflection of time portrays the largest ripples of long ago fading into the darkness while the urgency of the newly formed memories remains clearest.

In the Wildfire paintings, unified landscape views are divided into separate translucent sections through differentiated color assignments. These divisions represent various stages in an ongoing wildfire event, such as successive moments in the advancement of a large wildfire that can jump from treetop to treetop in seconds, continue to consume and burn for weeks or months, with the destruction ultimately succeeded by regrowth. 

In the Mantid series, representational, illustrative imagery is juxtaposed with plant matter symbolic of specific microclimates to portray stages in the assimilation of a non-native species. The combination of the representation of a subject and incorporation of the subject's actual environment via collage elements reflects the simultaneity of seeing/not seeing the subject camouflaged in its environment. The drawings floating in a layer of acrylic medium above collages of actual plant matter act as windows that showcase moments of clarity.

There is an irony inherent in our destruction and displacement of indigenous species with our attempts to wield control over biosystems that have inspired our own development. It calls to our collective conscious to remember to revere that which we regard as unique and worthy of replication.

Seeds represent both the beginning and the culmination of the cycle of plant life. As continued hybridization produces plants farther and farther removed from original species, seedlings of these hybrids often do not resemble the mother plant but will likely revert to characteristics of its ancestors.

These four works, bridging the Tree series and the Seed series, were commissioned by NTD Architecture and installed as a quadtych in the Main Lobby of Banner Thunderbird Medical Center in Glendale, Arizona.

These works explore the relationships between landscape, architecture, agriculture, horticulture and other aspects of industry that affect native plant life. References to these subjects are integrated into the surface of the paintings as dimensional collage elements. Branches, reeds, seeds and other raw plant materials as well as processed food items are embedded into a wax medium to showcase their fragility in various stages of life, from embryos to post-harvest products processed for mass consumption. Copper, metal wire and mesh underlying and surrounding the paintings suggest a mechanical / industrial presence infiltrating and isolating the natural ecosystem.

The diptychs in this series utilize dual imagery to contrast natural landscape settings with controlled landscaping, conveying aspects of the “trapped” or “captive" nature of flora used in landscape architecture, such as "the specimen" and "the border." The three-panel triptychs portray a progression from traditional observational oil paintings to the addition of actual objects being applied to the surface of the canvas. Access to a greater realm of sensations that a tangible subject or object can evoke intensifies both visual and sensory experiences as the different interpretations, from perceived to actual, contrast and inform one another.