statement | bio | cv | representation
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Lisa Noonis is a mixed-media painter whose work approaches a wide range of subject matter from still life and landscapes to personal narratives. Her paintings are expressive with a strong use of color and materiality. Noonis is represented in galleries nationwide and is featured in many private collections. Her Kittery, Maine studio is in an old school building where she attended elementary school.
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statement
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I start a painting with the open mindedness of an explorer. I don’t fully know where any given piece will land but am certain that if I show up to work every day, it will arrive at its destination. Ultimately the process/act of creating is as important as the final outcome. • I paint what I know—figures, still lifes, and landscapes—but push these “knowns” into abstracted places. I combine my love of color, form, line, and design without fully abandoning representation. • I work in a constant state of experimentation and discovery. My materials range from oils, acrylic, and latex, to graphite, oil pastels, and collage—media whose very nature allows me the freedom to work expressively and without hesitation. I often work directly on large sheets of canvas or paper on the walls, sometimes using tools like extension poles, squeegees and oversized paintbrushes. • As a self-taught painter, artistic growth is critical to me. While transformation is a challenge on many levels, it forces me to go beyond what I think I know and feeds my curious nature.
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representationBlue Gallery Kansas City, MO www.bluegalleryonline.com Anne Neilson Fine Art www.anneneilsonfineart.com Pryor Fine Art • Atlanta, GA www.pryorfineart.com Whitney Modern • Los Gatos, CA www.whitneymodern.com |
cvSOLO EXHIBITIONS
2020 Balancing Act, Whitney Modern, Los Gatos, CA 2018 Outside the Lines, Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA 2015 Tidal, The Banks Gallery. Portsmouth, NH 2012 Looking at Life, The George Marshall Store Gallery, York, ME 2005 Still Life, The Family Tree, Portsmouth, NH SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2018 The George Marshall Store Gallery, August 2018 Whitney Modern, Essence, Los Gatos, CA Kelley Stelling Contemporary, Fast Forward, Manchester, NH Greenhut Galleries, The Portland Show Bienniel, Portland, ME 2017 Blue Gallery, Flower Invitational, Kansas City, MO Green Hut Galleries Abstraction Invitational, Portland, Maine Green Hut Galleries Maine: The Way Life Is Invitational, Portland, Maine Mill Contemporary, RE:Configured: New Realism in the 21st Century, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2016 Piscataqua Artist Advancement Grant Finalist Exhibition, Discover Portsmouth Center Green Hut Galleries, Bienniel Invitational, The Portland Show, Portland, Maine 2015 What Artists Look Like, The Discover Portsmouth Center, Portsmouth, NH 2014 Change of Season: Invited New England Artists, The George Marshall Store Gallery, York, ME Small Works, Principle Gallery, Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA Curators Choice, The George Marshall Store Gallery, York, ME 2013 New Views of the Old World, Alpers Fine Art, Andover, MA The Bridges of Portsmouth, Discover Portsmouth Center, Portsmouth, NH 2012 Celebrating the Working Waterfront, The George Marshall Store Gallery, York, ME The Women of Walsingham, The Walsingham Gallery, Newburyport, MA From the Garden to the Kitchen Parts 1+2, The George Marshall Store Gallery, York, ME 2011 Textures of Us, The Edgewater Gallery, Middlebury, VT Boston International Art Exhibition, Represented by Bowersock Gallery, Provincetown, MA 2010 Boston International Art Exhibition, Represented by Bowersock Gallery, Provincetown, MA 2009 Boston International Art Exhibition, Represented by Bowersock Gallery, Provincetown, MA Painting From Life, The Walsingham Gallery, Newburyport, MA 2008 Approaches to Stillness - Two person show, Alper's Fine Art, North Andover, MA Figuratively Speaking - Three person show, The Walsingham Gallery, Newburyport, MA From the Fields and Forests- Coolidge Center for the Arts, Portsmouth, NH Invitational Holiday Exhibition, Sharon Arts Center, Sharon, NH EDUCATION 1985 University of Maine, Orono, BA Communications, Advertising, Art ART TRAINING
COMMISSIONS
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bio
Lisa Noonis was born in York, Maine, the fifth child in a family of seven children—five boys and two girls. Her parents, Peter and Sofie Scontras, are first generation Greek Americans, and still live in the gracious New England colonial where Lisa grew up in Kittery, Maine. The family was close and loving, fostering in all the Scontras children a strong sense of family, hard work, responsibility, ambition and independence. Lisa found art early in life. At age 10, in 1973, she won first place in the Strawbery Banke Children’s Art Festival in neighboring Portsmouth, NH. Later, in high school, she showed so much talent that her art teacher, Marcia Ryder, insisted that she go on to art school and pursue a career in the fine arts. Instead, Lisa’s father pushed her toward engineering as a more practical way to earn a living; and in 1981, she enrolled as an engineering student at the University of New Hampshire in nearby Durham, NH. After two semesters, having had enough of physics and advanced calculus, Lisa knew that engineering was not in her DNA. In spite of her dad’s disappointment, she transferred to the University of Maine in Orono the following year, self-majored in art, communications and advertising, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1985. After working a communications firm, Lisa embarked on her own as a freelance graphic designer and art director, eventually forming her own advertising, marketing and design company. For the next 15 years, she served a variety of businesses, institutions and marketing communications firms throughout New England, earning awards for design excellence and enjoying steadily increasing financial success as her reputation grew. But something was missing. Despite the satisfactions and financial security that came with commercial design, Lisa always felt the need to express something more personal and more permanent than ads, logos and brochures. In 2004, that feeling came to a head: she made a leap of faith by renting a studio in an old Kittery school building, and began to seriously pursue painting for the first time. Lisa spent a year studying technique with well-known painter Dennis Perrin during the early 1990s, and in 2012 took a master class with acclaimed American landscape artist Eric Aho. But for the most part, she learned on her own by painting every day—still lifes, portraits, landscapes, studies of the human form, anything that would sit still in the studio or in front of her canvas. Her early work and vision, visibly influenced by such masters as Cezanne, Modigliani and Morandi, have slowly developed over the years since 2004 to express more and more the inner vision of the artist. Realism has evolved into abstraction; painting from life into painting from memory; small canvases into large. Today, Lisa’s work continues to evolve and mature as she explores objects, people and places in her world. It appears regularly in galleries throughout the country, as well as in the collections a growing number of people around the world. | |||