Laurie Lipton is an artist who draws gigantic, photorealistic figurative images of various scenes, often combining various themes and subjects to create surreal images. Lipton’s practice serves as something of a protest against the art school notion that figurative art is dead, and that abstraction should be held as more important.

The artist’s studio, as pictured above, looks incredibly slick and clean. The wood floors have a polished shine to them, and there’s not a fleck of paint or pencil shavings to be seen. It’s also great to see a studio space packed with so many books – I wonder if these are for inspiration or direct reference, or if Lipton just keeps her personal library alongside her studio work space.

I enjoy the way that Lipton is pictured sitting on top of a supply trolley as she works on this piece – her artworks are done on such a massive scale that I wonder if she frequently employs step-ladders to get up to the very top of the board. She also has a straight edge ruler running along the unfinished work, ensuring that every detail is precisely placed and proportionate.

Lipton creates her paintings by layering thousands upon thousands of tiny crosshatching lines, giving each image and incredible sense of depth and dimension. The technique, however, is also extremely time-consuming and given the scale in which she works, each drawing takes many months to complete. I wonder how many hours each day the artist devotes to her drawing – working with such fine detail, it must be essential to take breaks to stretch and rest your eyes.

The artist was born in New York and lived all over the world for several decades before returning to the U.S., moving to Los Angeles, California. 

[image source]