Lisa Knox grew up in a small rural town in Southeastern Massachusetts known for its cranberries and horses. She received a Diploma, BFA and MAT from Museum School in affiliation with Tufts University. Lisa is an oil painter and principle instructor at the Fort Point Studio School which she founded in 2005.
For many years her work has focused on still life and portraiture with subject matter ranging from cups to old garments. The renderings of dresses and jackets evolved initially out of portrait sittings with clients. As time went on, Lisa began putting less emphasis on naturalism and began incorporating pictoral elements such as grids, diagrams, stencils and repeat patterns into her work.

Ordinary Treasure – Meditation on Still Life Painting

The saying “an object in possession seldom retains the charm that it had in pursuit,”
has come down to us as a metaphor illustrating the fickle nature of romantic love. Pliny’s remark was not intended to illustrate the aesthetic concerns of painters, but I find myself similarly pursuing illusive objects, which by nature of their shape, color, texture, etc. “enchant the eye and ensnare the heart.”

Clustered in corners of my studio are dozens of boxes and bags filled with objects: cups, candy dishes, clothing, vases, figurines, ribbons. Some of these objects have undergone hours of scrutiny and in the process have lost their original appeal. Other objects continue to captivate and seduce, appearing over and over again in my paintings. In the center of my studio are two small end tables draped with cloth. These tables support arrangements that have lovingly traveled with me from state to state, from studio to studio for close to a decade.  Here, the act of painting has much in common with the medieval hunt.  Painting becomes an allegory for both a spiritual and physical chase and in as much, the artist “grows grey while his love eludes him.”

At times, the painting functions as a reliquary - housing sacred objects belonging to individuals who have changed my life.  These objects: a postcard, a pair of dice, an old photograph are transformed from the everyday to the sacred through a network of personal associations.
When articles of clothing are unfolded and tacked to the wall, fact and fiction become entwined. Like cups and saucers traditionally associated with the genre, these paintings of dresses and jackets have their beginnings in observation. However, one could argue that a dress is as much an object as a teacup in a breakfast still life.  Yet the teacup when deprived of its contents remains a teacup – the party dress when deprived of its wearer retains a myriad of complex social, psychological and sensory associations. I use clothing to evoke memory, sensation, nostalgia and loss. In as much, a garment is more akin to memento mori than traditional still life. For instance, I look up and see a dress. I look down and paint an artifact, a fossil, a molted transparent shell from another time. Though I analyze the dress as I would an object in a still life, I render the form to evoke the transitory passage of time – knowing that the garments’ owner has grown older and changed.