After three years as an art major at the University of the South, Lisa left school and moved to Colorado. She continued to draw and paint there for 3 years, working in quick-study watercolors, gesture drawings and watercolor and ink.
In 1976, she and her first husband moved to New Hampshire, and she began a horse industry career there and, later, Texas, spanning 30+ years. In 2010, Lisa found herself making a huge career shift when she became Performing Arts Director of a local gallery/cultural center. Additional part-time employment as an assistant to the gallery Executive Director led her to begin painting again and to apply for the Director’s job when she left the gallery in 2012. As ED of the Creative Arts Center with only one additional part-time employee, virtually everything was Lisa’s responsibility – from organizing and hanging exhibits to scheduling classes and events to maintaining and running the gift shop. When she and her husband retired to Placitas during the pandemic, she finally had more time to paint, and the landscape and beauty of her new environs certainly inspired her art.
Lisa works almost exclusively in acrylics and mixed media, painting in both representational and abstract formats. Her non-representational pieces generally reflect a mood or are a response to the happenings in her life or the world. Her representational work is usually inspired by nature.
As a child, Lisa could not stop drawing horses, and the wild horses of Placitas are often the subjects of her paintings. She tries to capture not only their beauty but their lives as herd animals. The 30 years she spent training, showing, and breeding horses helped lead her to New Mexico – from the lush green of her childhood in the east to the arid pastures of North Texas to retirement in the high desert sun. The journey has been wonderful and she feels truly blessed.
Artist Statement
Painting allows me to interpret life in a way that brings joy. Whether I am painting a portrait of a friend’s pet, working plein aire or creating a scene from my imagination, color makes me happy. A hint of a particular color in a landscape often leads me to make it the predominant one, luring it out of hiding in a way that adds vibrancy and movement.
My personal preference is to cajole rather than challenge the viewer, so I seek to paint in a way that makes people smile (of course, an occasional “oh wow!” is nice, too). That’s why I rarely create a completely literal piece, preferring instead to “abstract” my representational work somewhat.
After studying art in college and then taking a 30 year hiatus from it, I began to paint again. Now that I have retired to one of the most enchanting and inspiring places on earth, I have truly found “my happy place.”
