Featured Artist Lisa Nelson

I create luminous watercolor portraits that highlight what is unique and beautiful about the amazing flora and fauna that surrounds us. My work combines a diverse background in fine art painting, graphic design, and illustration with my interest in examining each living thing to see how it fits into its habitat and the world at large. There is so much in our world that is fleeting, and my work strives to capture what I can before it fades from our view.

The transitory nature of watercolor works well to capture both my artistic method and my subject matter, as they are delicately fragile and all the more beautiful because of it. My work strives to document the unmatched beauty yet deep vulnerability of our world. My goal is to document all creatures in their natural landscape as they are now. I have done this most recently in a solo show at the FiveSparks Gallery in Harvard, MA where I focused on the sights and sounds of the area. ‘The Barred Owls of the Fruitlands’ shows the title creature against the backdrop of the Fruitlands’ nature preserve topography, abstracted to resemble tree bark. This show also featured the eccentric alpacas at a nearby farm; for both ‘Humming Alpacas’ and ‘Outstanding Dreams Epiphany’, I used the waveform image of the alpaca’s hum as a background motif.

‘The Monarchs of Brazos Valley’ focuses on some of the famous flora and fauna found in Navasota, TX, where I lived for six months as part of an artist residency. As part of a painting series on the beautiful and often endangered species that can be found in the expansive Pinelands preserve in New Jersey, I focused on the sinuous ‘Eastern Mud Salamander’ and how it relates to its intimate environment.

I also like to find inspiration in the work of nature writers. ‘Only the Chickadees’ is based on a Henry David Thoreau quote: “Every resounding step on the frozen earth is a vain knocking at the door of what was lately genial Nature…Of birds only the chickadees seem really at home. Where they are is a hearth and a bright fire constantly burning.”