Baroque Modernism by Lisa Loudermilk
About the art
Essentially, I am a painter. But I don’t use brushes. I roll out paint on slick, clear barrier coats isolating the previous layers. Then I “unpaint” selectively in some areas by slicing cleanly through the drying paint with tools I’ve made so that all previous layers become part of the image. I incorporate pH-buffered flat items like fade-resistant car wrap films for visual effects currently not available in art paint.
Compositions aren't pre-plotted because it’s more engaging and challenging to anticipate and reassess how colors, values, and forms interact with each other. I make and solve complex aesthetic puzzles for a living.
Artist statements, lofty and not
Artist statements sometimes rely on creative writing afterward to give artwork faux social/political/aesthetic/$ value. And there's also a lot of time to think about yourself during the many solo hours spent in the studio. Here are various genuine ways I explain the work to myself and to viewers:
-I identify my work in the context of historical modernism - specifically MCM minimalism and linear abstract art. I would like to be a minimalist artist, but this is what comes out instead.. So I've convinced myself that I have created brilliant irony by “baroquing up” minimalism. For me, the inevitable progression of working with minimalist principles decades forward means degrading them by compounding many lines and shapes, mixing organic textures into hard-edge linear forms, and even adding previously declassé shiny stuff. I incorporate sparkly celestial references to reinsert the natural world into classic modernism, something which was just about human achievement.
But original minimalist art itself is many decades surpassed and MCM artists aren’t the only reasons that we all know shapes and lines. Our species uniquely and commonly organizes and advances itself with linear forms. Artists got hip to the beauty of those forms over a century ago. My work hopefully is a fresh and meaningful progression in that lineage.
-This work is as much integrated circuitry and dense cityscapes as it is crazy quilting. I mash up traditional masculine and traditional feminine forms. But that’s just an after-the-fact observation.
-The busy energy resembles my mind struggling to complete a single five-word thought. But it also illustrates, for me, perfectly achieved balance and harmony of innumerable little details- a fantasy ideal for me. But whether this art is the visual output of overjazzed neurology, I do not know.
-There is an honest origin story for any artwork I make with lines. There once were overwhelming circumstances and painting simple lines over and over was good therapy. But should that really give my work more gravita$$$?
-This work is a pandering attempt to seem like a really cool person. But I suspect that’s a subliminal motivation in a lot of art.
Probably the truest artist statement:
These factors all are true, but probably not driving forces. Mainly I am just making what I think looks good and meaningfully different right now.
Thanks,
Lisa Loudermilk
CV etc- 2000-2025
How can a well-collected artist have no real CV/resume/web presence after decades? By being a self-repped artist participating at juried art fairs around the US. That means managing innumerable little details to sell directly to collectors instead of depending on gallery representation and public exhibitions.
And then also somehow finding the time to focus on art, too.
I averaged fourteen shows a year from 2002-2018 with several projects including primitivist pastel landscapes, and digital fantasy assemblages.
I also have been the business manager for my and my spouse’s art since 2000, and was his part-time studio support from 2018-2023.
My own art career was on hold from 2018 to 2023 with something like family leave. My new work breaks from all my previous whimsical subject matter by exploring and compounding linear abstract themes, refining them until I make beauty and order out of all the chaos.