Liz Christiansen is a Brisbane based multidisciplinary designer and artist focused on creating vibrant, bold artwork and graphics across surface pattern design, collage, mixed media, hand lettering and digital design. Liz's work is inspired by abstract shapes, colour, light and movement across natural and urban environments.

Tell us about your creative process. How, when, and why do you create?

 After a long break from creating for myself, I felt the need to make art again – just for me. I have a multidisciplinary practice that spans a mixed medium realm – I work across collage, paint, ink, drawing and digital design.

 My creative process is intuitive – I don’t often venture out with a set plan and create when I can. I try to find a moment to create every day – even if it’s something small – a quick collage, mark making or painting papers. My art and surface pattern design practice currently is around my graphic and branding design business and family commitments. Working from a home studio, I do have flexibility, but due to family or client projects, often I can’t create at all the exact moments I would like – although it's getting easier as my kids get older.

 The Artist Way morning pages have become a big part of my morning routine and creative process, helping me with clarity and getting focused for the day – just a brain dump so I get some things out of my head. Listening to music is an important part of my process as well, helping me get into creative flow and get in the zone to work intuitively. 

 How did you get started in the creative industries? Do you remember a moment, time, or place when you realised this is what you’d love to do?

 I always knew I wanted to do something creative growing up – I was constantly making and crafting as a child – attending art classes outside of school, making jewellery, lettering and drawing every chance I could. But somewhere along the way I picked up the belief I wasn’t good enough to be a full-time artist. So, with a desire to work in the creative industry still, I discovered graphic design and fell in love. I loved working with visuals, typography and colour – and it all fell into place. After graduating with a Bachelor of Design Studies at university, I then went on to work in the graphic design industry and now have over 25 year’s experience as a graphic and branding designer.

 The last 17 years I have worked in my own business amongst other endeavours and parenting 3 children. I threw myself into the depths of client graphic design work and briefs. I unconsciously put creating off for myself – I made jewellery here and there, but after a while realised something was missing. I felt I lost myself, my own creative voice and style along the way. I found myself drawn back to creating for myself – so the last 5 years I have been shifting back to my own creative work and developing my art and surface pattern design practice.

 Collage was my way back to creating for myself. The way I could find I had a place to start again creating artwork without feeling overwhelmed. After working so long digitally, I found I wanted everything to be perfect – perfectly aligned, perfectly straight. Collage has been my way to find beauty in the imperfections, to embrace the imperfect cuts of my scissors or paper tears and all the wonky lines. It also allowed me to start painting again, to work more intuitively and let go of perfection.

 What do you find most challenging about the creative process?

It’s quite challenging for me to focus on one project at a time. I have a constant list of things I want to do, want to learn, want to create! Also, after so long as a graphic designer, you get used to the boundaries – the boundaries of a client brief, boundaries of a project. With my art there are no boundaries now – it’s limitless which is wonderful… but also incredibly challenging at the same time to reign myself in!

 Do you find yourself actively looking for inspiration or do you like to let it seek you out in the quieter moments?

I let inspiration find me in the every day – after being a designer for so long, I find I’m subconsciously always on the look out but it’s not always at the forefront of my mind. I’ll let my mind wander and then something will suddenly grab my attention – just a shape, flower, a shadow or light, a pattern, a movement, colour or textures from nature and urbanscapes – a garden bed of flowering succulents to a city wall covered in graffiti. I’ll take a pic and I carry notebooks – take notes of the ideas so I don’t forget something later on. I keep different notebooks of ideas and inspiration – contained with random ideas, things ripped out of magazines, small sketches. If inspiration arrives at a moment and I am not able to create at that time, I have this bank of ideas in notebooks now. So, when I come to create, I have something to work on as a starting point.

 Are there any consistent themes or messaging we are likely to experience when enjoying your work?

 From my design background, visual storytelling and bold and graphic composition have found their place in my work. Pattern, colour and shapes are also a part of my visual language and a vital part of my work and process. I love working with the use of positive and negative space – looking for the abstract shapes between the shapes and elements and how they interact and layer with each other.

 Themes of my work are a little eclectic and juxtapose between urban, natural environments and capturing movement. I like to think of my work like a kaleidoscope – a constantly shifting and movement of bold, abstract shapes and colour. A visual exploration of the joyful fragments that make up a life – like a terrazzo pattern, each piece holds a story and colour. A sense of offbeat adventure – a little bit of this, and a little bit of that… I am definitely a maximalist! 

  What do you hope your work says about you?

I hope that my work expresses that I’m endlessly curious and not afraid to experiment. That I want to share joy, that I don’t stop learning, that I value imagination and creative thinking.

 What sort of effect would you like your work to have on people?

I love the idea of my artwork interacting with people everyday – making them stop even for only a brief moment and feeling the uplifting joy and positivity, a playful and vibrant artwork or pattern can bring. And to feel and experience the little piece of myself, love and creativity I put into everything I do.

 Do you have any advice for young or aspiring visual artists?

My advice to young and aspiring artists is just start calling yourself an artist – don’t wait for anyone else to give you permission or someone let you know you are good enough to pursue it. So much of me waiting to listen and act on my call back to art had to do with my mindset and self-confidence. If you create, you are an artist. Also, create your own opportunities, look for collaborations – so much of your growth as an artist comes with having a community around you.

 What lessons have you learned along the way in your time as an artist?

Don’t let anyone else define to you what art is or isn’t – art is not just limited to the gallery walls or a painting on an easel. Art is all around us, it can be created messy on the floor, be a print on a cushion or notebook cover, what we wear, what we surround ourselves with, what we eat, the way we live. For too long I worried about what other people defined art as and how I fit within that – which for a long time, stopped me being able to call myself an artist.

 For me, crossing the worlds of art and design often meant I didn’t know where I fit best. I always had the feeling like I was too much of an artist to belong in the design world, and too much of a designer to belong in the art world. I went out to blur the gap between the disciplines for myself and then realised the lines never existed in the first place – it was all my mindset the whole time and I had fabricated my own barriers where I thought my two worlds couldn’t collide. So, my art practice is becoming a personal journey of discovering I don’t fit in one box and realising that’s ok – having acceptance of myself and the different kinds of art I want to create. I’m giving myself permission to create whatever I want to create – not to just stick in one lane or medium. Accepting the multidisciplinary creative – embracing both the designer and artist in me. But this was not always the case, for so many years I kept everything separate in its own compartment, its own lane as that’s what I’d always been told – to focus on one thing at a time! Which is probably why I procrastinated so long starting creating my own artwork. Now I realise that I need to do more than one thing and I’m exploring how I combine my mediums. How do I use collage to make repeat patterns, how do I use pattern to strengthen a brand identity, how do use paint to make letterforms.

 A final note or thought to readers and supporters of Notely products, who are about to discover some of your designs:

Always keep yourself open to inspiration, don’t stop being curious or learning. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite quotes by Stephen Hawking:

 "Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up."