WHITEWALL: Your work has always been rooted in found imagery from the past, bringing it into the present. Can you tell us a bit about this?
LIZZIE GILL: I studied painting and photography, searching for a way to combine these disciplines brought me to mixed media. Moving to Brooklyn and collaborating with other artists was an important part of my journey. I managed an artist collective for a few years, curating and executing exhibitions in New York and abroad, which was a great experience and helped me formulate how to run my own studio.
WW: Where did your love of vintage and retro images come from?
LG: I think it derives from a love of the mid-century aesthetic combined with a hoarding tendency, which I think most artists can relate to. I used to love thrifting vintage clothes which brought me to a local vintage shop in Saratoga Springs, where I studied art at Skidmore College. I’d be in there every week, looking through the old magazines, which the owner always replenished regularly. It was such a wonderful shop, with rooms of vintage clothes piled high, knickknacks, and table-top treasures. He always had jazz playing, and I’d spend hours poring over the stacks of 1950s magazines looking for my next subject.
WW: How has your work evolved?
LG: I have always worked with found imagery and collage is a base of my practice. But my work has evolved over the years from smaller works on paper into larger, mixed media works on panel. Conceptually it has expanded from a focus on digital romantic communications to the evolution of technology and how we interact.
WW: Tell us a bit about an average day in the studio.
LG: I work from home, which I think everyone now can attest to being a bit maddening at times, but it works for me. A lot of being an emerging artist is being an entrepreneur and owning your own business, so I usually do admin in the mornings (while the coffee is still working) and paint, or work in the silkscreen studio in the afternoon. If I’m working on an editorial deadline, that will be my day and sometimes night.
WW: Tell us a bit about what you’re creating right now.
LG: I’m creating collages and digital works—mostly editorial pieces, which is a part of my studio practice. Creating work for the New York Times and The Atlantic as news unfolds has allowed me time to sit with other people’s stories artistically. Doing so is a reminder to search outside my own experience, particularly when this disease has such a global reach.
WW: What are you listening to, reading, and watching? Are you cooking anything in particular?
LG: I’m listening to Tom Misch, reading Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel, and watching and all the “Harry Potter” movies.
