Lisa Petsu

American-born artist Lisa Petsu received her B.F.A from the School of Visual Arts, NYC, and her M.F.A from Bard College, NY, where she received the Elaine de Kooning Memorial Scholarship for painting.

She creates idiosyncratic abstract paintings, sculptures, and installation art that are highly textural, using objects and narratives from her lived experience. Her work entertains the edge between the art space of galleries and the domestic architecture of personal life. Cultivating a spiritual connection to her materials, Lisa considers the accumulation of colour, time, and emotion in physical layers and moments of imperfect beauty on the canvas.

Lisa shares, ”I see materials in the world – layers of paint on walls, furniture, objects, and architectural details simultaneously revealing/concealing a narrative of perfectly imperfect paint drips, blobs of colour, and various textures. The layers reveal time, intention and fragments of emotion. The objects I use are buffers between spaces - outside world/interior personal space, extensions of the painted surface-reaching into the real world. Colour is as important as texture and other qualities in these materials. Colour functions like the sense of smell- it triggers a memory or emotion. It registers time, place and thing. Colour is a connection that percolates emotion and idea in my painting. I redigest specific colour references from popular culture, nature, my surroundings, intuition and memory onto the layered painting surface – recombining domestic, architectural, personal, and art elements to arrive at something that resonates with my experience in the world.”

Follow the artist along: www.lisapetsu.com
Lisa is featured inside the Spring 2025 Edition of the Art Seen.