My paintings update the idea of the sublime landscape, locating its essence as much in the commercial as in the natural. I have investigated this through the ways the marketplace and the wilderness intersect, overlap, and inform each other, in such American venues as sports events, shopping malls, residential development, highways, casinos, and tourist destinations.



The works often pay homage to many previous interpreters, from Whistler’s fireworks, to Church’s majestic Hudson Valley, O’Keeffe’s New Mexico, Ruscha’s gas stations, Hockney’s abstract composite California, and Thomas Kinkaide’s anachronistic vision, as well as different painting genres.



The paintings are constructed as organically and irrationally as the landscapes themselves. Within the painting space, the paintings are amok with different gestural styles, as abstract and realistic forms erupt onto the canvas. The paint-handling and the imagery is at times very descriptive of the places I observe, while at other times it is loose, layered, careless, and more abstract, hoping to recall the memory of previous uses of the land. The densely painted surfaces and wide-open spaces on the canvas try to convey both a sense of hope and emptiness, a feeling both critical and celebratory of the American landscape.

—Lisa Sanditz, CRG Gallery, New York, NY