Interview with Artist Lisa Golightly

AHC: You started out in photography, what made you decide to take up painting instead? Do you still practice photography at all?

Lisa: I did start in photography and that actually was my focus in art school, but I always had painting in the back of my head, I think.  My dad was an amazing painter, so that was a huge influence.  He worked mostly in abstract, but also worked a lot with wood and sculpture, so that may also be where my tendency to move through mediums and explore a lot, comes from.
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AHC: In your figurative art you work with found photo's, are these photo's picked up at garage sales and the like? What is your process like with these? How do you create that delicate balance between anonymity and the personal that runs through these paintings?

Lisa: Yes, they are all photos found and purchased, from estates as well as ebay. I think because they are not my photos, my family, I am able to create a distance, but still play with themes that are very rooted in my experience.
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AHC: Can you talk a bit about your abstract work? It's incredibly visceral, stormy, mysterious, I don't think I've ever been as pulled in by abstract work as I have been by yours. I sense so much breaking through, like poetically drafted Rorschach's. What is the inspiration and process like with these?

Lisa: I am always personally drawn to abstracts, so when I was ’stuck’ at a point in my figurative work a few years ago, I played around with what I call my floodline paintings. They are very much the purely emotional side of the coin from my figurative work.  It is also just nice to go between the two, the process is so completely different and challenging in different ways.

AHC: Snapshots are an important element in your work, you’ve stated that they can even change our memories in some ways, can you explain what you mean by that?

Lisa: For myself, and I’m sure many others, many of my earliest memories are influenced by the photos of that time. Photos become like a touch stone that we go back to and often that photo is the memory. I’m also fascinated by a study I read that showed people remembered fewer details when they took a photo, almost as if we don’t actually see/experience something if we think we captured it with our camera.

AHC: Who are some of your artistic influences?

Lisa: So many and the list is always growing.  Obviously my dad, as well as many of the painter that worked in a similar style of his era, Franz Kline and Gerhard Richter.  Also Sally Mann, Fairfield Porter, Alex Katz and Luc Tuymans. (and many more)
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AHC: Do you remember the first work of art you encountered that took your breath away?

Lisa: Hmm, I don’t have one single moment like that. My parents took us to the art museum at our local university quite often and collected antiques, including art, so it was always there in the background.
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AHC: Do you have any upcoming exhibits or new projects you’d like to mention?

Lisa: Right now I’m playing with a new technique of manipulating the paint and image so hopefully that will continue and lead to new work.


For more information visit www.lisagolightlyart.com/ 

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