Liane Engstrom

Lives and works in North Olmsted, OH, USA

Artist statement

Folds of Time The landscape is one of the few places where we can perceive time. It is from landscapes that we have come to create maps as a means of understanding and navigating the space we exist in. By using the landscape as a platform, I create fantastical settings through a collection of spaces and places that merge from across time. As the fabricator of an alternative cartography, my work maps humanity’s existence within the vastness of geological time. The work balances between abstraction and depiction. Marks and colors create initial moods of playfulness, while structures and other rendered features stand as familiar markers of human existence and experience. These fictional landscapes are a compendium of my personal interpretation of the external world. The human world is a short and incredibly powerful force when compared to the slowness and vastness of geological time. It is through this lens that I find my content. These landscapes are not a mirror, reflecting our human existence back to us, but are instead duplications of our existence where the perceptions of time and space have been disrupted and expanded. When beginning a work, I often do not construct any preliminary plans, knowing very little about the final outcome of the piece. In this way, I am a creator, yet also an observer, feeling excitement with the process as changes occur. I begin to lay in thin washes of acrylic paint on canvas stretched over five feet in either direction. Using large brushes,...

Artwork