Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lisa Kellner. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Lisa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

As a visual artist, you can be “known” for one type of work. Once you get momentum around that work it is exciting and gratifying. People request you for exhibitions, galleries begin to notice and sales start to happen. All part of the dream of being an artist. You work hard and start to see the payoffs.

But artists are inherent creators and full of new ideas. Part of our job is to determine which ideas are worthy of pursuing. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut.

I was making site specific room installations and following the momentum of the work. While I loved this work, I also wanted to find my voice as a painter. I just didn’t have the time to do it.

Finally, that voice became so loud I couldn’t ignore it. A wise artist friend of mine suggested that I take a year off, not showing work, and just rediscover who I am as a painter. Immediately I rejected this! How could I put a pause on the momentum? This was way too risky!

Soon I realized that this wasn’t such a bad idea. And while I did continue to show and sell work, I prioritized finding my voice as a painter. It took about 3-4 years till I can honestly say I was making paintings that felt authentic, true to who I am and that I was excited about. I really had to start from scratch and rebuild the foundation of who I was as an artist. This started with simply “playing” – getting back to the joy of painting and allowing that to be enough.

Now I feel so gratified that I took the time to listen to that inner voice that wanted me to shift my work into a new direction. I know who I am as an artist and feel strongly rooted in this. I also am SO grateful for all the previous work I made and explorations I have embarked on. And the sculptural work is finding its way back into my practice.

Also, I am more focused than ever and I know that my work can grow organically from a core belief in the ideas I explore. The best thing I ever did was take a risk and bank on myself rather than continue to follow exterior momentum that had become increasingly dissatisfying.

Lisa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a visual artist. In my work I use a reductive language and intuitive approach to make paintings and sculptural constructions about the environment, societal constructs and how we occupy space. I’m interested in how the process of painting itself becomes the mode of communicating the emotional tenor of space.

My work explores dimension, place and systems of mark making. The paintings forge spatial relationships between the physical and the intangible. Inspired by nature, history and the spaces humans create for themselves, my paintings conflate place and structure with memory and perception.

Influenced by travel and the places I’ve experienced, I seek to distill identity and perception down to their very essence by merging a minimalist approach with a painterly output.

I started out as a mural painter in New York working on all kinds of projects for individuals and companies for about nine years. I then entered the world of art exhibitions and gallery sales. I was curated into an exhibition of experimental works (“Conversions” at the WPA/Corcoran Museum, DC) by the artist Sam Gilliam in 2006. This began my love of exploring materials in new ways and creating site responsive installations. But I always kept painting, even if I kept those paintings to myself.

As I began to exhibit the paintings along with the installations, I realized that I wanted to completely focus on painting. Now, I have a nice balance of making large scale paintings along with “Deconstructed Paintings” that are wall sculptures.

I am most proud of my tenacity and experimental nature. I know how to trust my gut and focus my energy. but it took a lot of learning and inner work to get here!

I now live on an island of the coast of Maine where I grow my own food and try to work with nature, not against it. I work in the studio every day and absolutely love life!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The most important lesson I had to unlearn was that in order to “be” in the artworld you had to follow a particular set of rules. What I know now to be true is that when you follow other people’s rules, you become less and less of yourself.

Being an artist is about exploring your own unique perspective of the world. It is crucial that artists learn to develop their uniqueness unencumbered by exterior constraints.

For me, I was going along following what I thought I had to do to be an exhibiting artist and it was working – to a point. My work was gaining traction, but I wasn’t happy. In fact I was miserable and stressed. I had to learn the hard way to stop complying to certain rules and trust my gut. This meant saying “no” to things that felt wrong for my work.

The more I began to trust my instincts, the happier I became.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

First of all, I believe that everyone is creative in their own way! Whether you create an object, start a business or are parenting a child, its your human proclivity to be creative and inventive.

The difference for artists is that no one is supplying us with a stable income and health insurance. We can have great months and great years or we can have terrible ones. It really is all up to us and having a healthy perspective about what we do.

Also structure is a fluid concept for the artist. I have a lot of structure in my art practice but it is always shifting and changing depending on the work I’m making, the exhibitions I am preparing for and the sales of work that have to be shipped off. True, their are some artists that run their career like a business and are extremely successful doing so. If that works for you, great. But if you are like me and like to have your own hands in every aspect of your practice, then own this notion and embrace it. Create a life that supports the person you ARE, not the person the world wants you to be.    

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lisakellner.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisakellnerstudio/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LisaKellner
• Other: Gallery Representation: https://www.lisakellner.com/links Resources for Artists: https://www.lisakellner.com/help-for-artists

Image Credits
Aa images courtesy of Lisa Kellner.