Lisa Foster

Boston MA

Artist Statement

My paintings are made with reproduction quilting fabrics from the colonial period to the late 1800's. They are about impermanence.

My nana was a quilter and my first artistic inspiration. The tiny pieces of fabric that once filled her home have long resided in my mind and now fill may canvas. I am a figurative painter, caught up like many in the emotions and psychology of life. Each work is the isolation of a moment, a relationship, a person. Everything we hurry by and skip over while living ends up unavoidable on the canvas. I use my work to transcend. The paintings are made on multiple panels. Their construction refers to the non-solid nature of a human being and all that surrounds us. After sketching my figures I relinquish control over to the fabrics. I cannot very well dictate how they will describe my images. It is a sideways rather than direct approach to my figures, as though painting with peripheral vision. The fabric provides a buffer between me and the memory. Their many pieces dull the edges of a temporary, individual reality and I look for the impermanent, non-self, interbeing nature that is our greater truth.