Lisa Haskell received a BFA and graduated summa cum laude with departmental honors as valedictorian of her class from Moore College of Art and Design in 2010. Lisa has received various awards, most notably, the Frieda Fehrenbacher Travel Fellowship for travel to Stockholm Sweden.
She is a wife and mother to three daughters, living and working in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Aside from spending time in her studio, she is also an art teacher at a local cooperative school.
Lisa’s artwork primarily consists of painting, and her surroundings have continually provided inspiration through the competing contradictions of urban and natural influences. Lisa is intrigued by situations of deterioration, entanglement, and unruliness in nature as well as urban environments – in her most recent work she creates imagined worlds which come from the intense desire to travel and explore more distant lands.
Statement
I convey a philosophical depiction of my feelings through conceived notions of otherworldly landscapes. Portions of the concrete world are stored as visual memory which is then translated into an abstract formation of thoughts.
Through the work, I am expressing the intense desire to travel to more distant lands – the desire is both literal and figurative in nature. Nostalgia rooted in personal history is present in the layered illusions of space - exposing, retreating, and confronting inadequacies along the journey. A travel of sorts through memories to find the self.
There is reference to the dichotomy between what is seen on the surface and what is kept hidden – who we claim to be and who we are in actuality. The forms and marks in my visual vocabulary may be seemingly calm, serene, or even pretty but the underlying energy is that of the disparity between desire and reality.
By creating imaginary worlds, I am allowing myself to escape to another place. I find that this is an important mechanism in relating my work to my everyday life – the idea that life with all its familiarities and complexities can get in the way, sometimes it is necessary to take a leap into the unknown.
