Lisa Beerntsen

 

Lisa Beerntsen lives and paints in Sonoma County, California. She received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1991, and her BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts—now California College of the Arts (CCA)—in 1983. She has exhibited her work on both coasts, in various group, juried, and solo exhibitions, including shows at the Donna Seager Gallery (San Rafael), Arches Gallery (Healdsburg), Graton Gallery, and at HANG and Meridian Galleries, in San Francisco. 

 

Lisa has been an adjunct art instructor for over 20 years at the Santa Rosa Junior College, where she teaches classes in color, painting, and drawing. She has previously taught courses at: The San Francisco Art Institute; California State University, Stanislaus; the University of Maine; and the Univesity of Massachusetts.

 

 

Artist's Statement

 

Nature has long been my primary inspiration—its shapes and forms, spaces and processes. Gradually my paintings have evolved to mirror a more interior vision of nature. Some of the shapes I use I derive from visible forms—seedpods, blossoms, pollen, jellyfish, fungi—others are more intuitive or invented. I’m fascinated by shapes that recur at different scales—from the microscopic to the immense. A couple of years ago hexagons drifted into my work. They are wonderful compositional bridges, but I love that they also reference things as diverse as honeycomb structure and notations of molecular structure. The daughter of a scientist, I love the visual language of the sciences. 

 

Recent intensive forays into media new to me (watercolor and ceramics, for example) have influenced my feelings about space, surface, and texture, and these feelings have fed back into my larger-scale works on canvas and panel. My hexagons have gradually fused to form the larger, geometrically influenced forms that dominate my recent work. Knowing myself and the way my working process has changed in the past, I know that the linked hexagons, too, will eventually disappear—gradually mutating, evolving into some new and wondrous form.

 

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