Elizabeth Johnson: Would you call what you do engineering appearance? Do you see this work as being somewhat akin to reverse engineering an image by using your architectural drawing skills?

Lisa S. Roberts: ...Working with cut paper presents certain limitations that have become an important part of my visual language. Unlike paint, I can’t easily blend colors or create subtle gradations. Instead, I use different colors, shapes, and overlapping layers to create a sense of depth and dimension. This is where my architectural training is particularly helpful. Architecture taught me to understand space three-dimensionally: to see how forms relate to one another, how planes overlap, and how perspective and proportion create a sense of depth. I draw on that understanding when translating a three-dimensional space or object into flat pieces of paper.

Elizabeth Johnson: Looking at "A Place to Wait", I wonder if your invented landscapes almost always start with drawings on site? Or are the buildings most often invented? Does the possibility of being watched by someone inside them balance your external gaze implied though focused rendering and painting?

Ted Walsh: This house is based on a similar house from another painting, both originally starting as snow landscapes. One winter day a few years ago, I did a lot of driving around and working from the landscape...For a big painting like this I figure it out with several sketches in the sketchbook, but they are not always direct sketches from the landscape.

Sometimes I lean into something like a watching narrative. It may be a hint of a figure in a window, or the landscape, or a general trespassing vibe, like feeling you’re somewhere you’re not supposed to be. But usually, it’s less about being watched, and more about something like pacing or accretion. I like the idea of little vernacular spaces formed over a long time. I like the heating oil tank and the chimney tucked in the crook of the two parts of the building in this painting.

Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to present If Memory Serves, a solo exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Ted Walsh. Rooted in the American realist tradition, Walsh’s paintings and drawings draw on a lifelong fascination with buildings, landscapes, familiar objects, and the stories they might hold. That curiosity extends throughout his work, where architectural forms and object portraits suggest stories that reach beyond what is immediately visible.

Gross McCleaf Gallery is also proud to present Quiet Home, a solo exhibition of new cut paper collages by Lisa S. Roberts. Originally trained as an architect, Roberts spent more than three decades working in graphic and product design, creating designs for home furnishings, textiles, and everyday objects. Throughout her career, her fascination with color and architectural space led her to develop a distinctive practice in cut-paper collage. Working with surgical scissors, an X-ACTO knife, and hundreds of sheets of colored paper, Lisa constructs intricate compositions one layer at a time.