Sherri Lisota

Thank you for visiting my website.  

 

I make paintings that reflect the beauty of everyday environments, the world around us, and the joy that is part of being alive.  For the most part I work from life, and have recently begun a series based solely on imagination, play, and memory...as I am currently in the process of developing the work, I'll write more about that later. 

 

I have always been interested our environments, natural and cultural, and our relationships with them.  Especially during the summer months when I'm not teaching and the weather is good, I work outside en plein air, responding to vistas that reflect the changing landscapes and seasons, and the inhabitants present in them.  My practice is supplemented by the use of images that I take with me into the studio to further develop my paintings and to create new ones beyond the landscapes that I see. 

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I'm also interested community landmarks of the unheralded kind, memorializations of past lives, culture, and economies. I'm drawn to abandoned architecture, repurposed structures, and the impact of commercial farming, industry, and frac mining on the landscape itself and on our lives. My work always seeks beauty in these subjects, not for romantic reasons or to trivialize the impact of industrial and agricultural progress, as it were, on the very lives that are situate near them, but to carry on in the tradition of William Blake and others who were concerned with these ideas.   

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I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina where I was mentored by Mary Whisonant and Roger L. Steele, both deeply gifted artists and outstanding professors, and who became great friends to me.  It's impossible to express my gratitude for them and all that they gave me while I was with them in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.  They changed my life.  My MFA was completed at Vermont College where I studied with, among others, Janet Kaplan, Humberto Ramirez, and Jennifer Williams, all honored scholars and visionaries.  I currently serve as Professor of Art at Viterbo University.

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If you are interested in knowing more about my work, I'm happy to speak with you or to correspond.  Please contact me at sjlisota@gmail.com.

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Thank you. 

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Sherri