A year ago, we were busy at Finch Lane Gallery installing our 35×35 exhibit, a showcase for Utah’s young artistic talent. Then the closures hit. (The exhibit only opened to the public, in a limited way, in June.)  A year since the closures, we have decided to check in with the artists from 35×35 to see what they’re working on now in our WIP feature.

Salt Lake City artist Lis Pardoe says she has been listening to the audiobook Getting Unstuck by Pema Chodron. “It is all about meditation in hard times. Through a recent difficult family event, I have also recognized the importance of being still enough to let life move through you, no matter how difficult it may be, and that rest is releasing.”

The audiobook has provided a new perspective to the work currently on Pardoe’s easel, the first in a series of figurative themes of “moments that bring me ease and have always done so. This one started as a memory of my mother braiding or playing with my hair and how the action could almost put me to sleep. At the age of 8, my parents divorced, and my mother was no longer around to do my hair for school pictures, so my older sister stepped in. She has styled my hair on multiple occasions since, including my wedding day, and it still relaxes me. The two figures pictured are this same older sister as well as her daughter. This interaction mimics my mother-daughter bond, but I also view my niece sitting in as me with my sister.”

Pardoe has prepared an oil painting sketch, graphite preparatory sketch, and an under-the-paint charcoal drawing transferred from the graphite sketch. She’ll be starting into oil paint, she says, as soon as she gets the perspective dialed in.

Pardoe trained for five years at the Hein Atelier of Traditional Art in Salt Lake City and has been painting and teaching in the city since she graduated in 2015. This year she won a Museum Exhibition Award in the 15th International ARC Salon, and will have three to four paintings from her new series at Springville Museum of Art in September as part of the award. She is represented by Meyer Gallery in Park City.

Work in Progress

This 15 Bytes feature talks with artists about what is on their “easel” right now.