Liz Whitney Quisgard (1998)

“In my youthful, truth-seeking days, I wrote reams of justifications for my work. Now that the work has matured, and I, simultaneously put less and less value on truth, words have become irrelevant. So, when called upon to explain what I do, I am inclined to say, ‘What you see is what you get.’

Couched in that flippant response is a firm conviction that the visual arts are exactly that—visual. No meanings. No messages. No preachments. No symbols. Politics, philosophy, the human condition, the environment and other causes about which people paint, perform and sculpt these days are subjects for discourse—best expressed with words. Attempts to transform them into pictorial images tend to become mere illustration—most often jejune.

My goal is to surprise and engage the mind by seducing the eye. Toward that end I rely on pattern. The term “decorative” has been applied to my work—most often in a negative sense. But, that’s okay with me, for some of the most imortant art is essentially decorative. Islamic rugs, Greek column capitals, Navajo textiles, Byzantine mosaics, Baroque architectural embellishments … and so forth.

We all understand a row of triangles, a strip of squares, an arrangement of circles and swirls. No need to ask their meaning. They simply are what they are. They speak to us universally and without apology.”