Lisa Lauer

I consider myself primarily a landscape painter, but no matter the subject, I like to evoke a certain precarious sensory state within the viewer. There is stillness and grace and beauty in nature, but there is also uncertainty, sometimes foreboding, and even the possibility of outright chaos. It’s the tension between these states that I find interesting.

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I also like the challenge of transforming a flat surface into a topography the viewer wants to explore. This is a passion perhaps best explained by the fact that I grew up in a flat, industrial area of Ohio and always looked forward to seeing other places. When we moved to upstate New York, and later Virginia, I tagged along with my mother, a lifelong painter, to estate auctions. I was fascinated by the local folk art with its stoicism and odd perspectives, its elevation of the mundane to the mythic. I decided to try creating one of these strange paintings myself. It sold, and somehow that convinced me that I could become a painter like my mother. 

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After earning a degree in art history with a minor in studio art from Swarthmore College, I thought I would go on to study art restoration and work in a museum. As fate would have it, I ended up in the tech industry. But in the back of my mind, there was always a singular goal: to eventually live where land meets sea and paint full-time. And finally, here we are.