JERRI LISK
CONTEMPORARY PAINTINGS ON METAL
JERRI LISK CONTEMPORARY PAINTINGS ON METAL
JERRI LISK Jerri Lisk was born into a world of paint brushes, pencil and paper. In her hands these tools translate water, sky, desert and mountain into brilliantly colored contrasts for the striking lines, that her eyes pull from even the most simple of trees. A student of painter, Frank Holda, the fluency of her use of texture, material, surface and hue came from later work in London at the Leonard Pardon School of Specialty Design. Today, with her home deep in the American West, Jerri sets out into deserts, down into river canyons, up craggy ridges and peaks lined with battered limber pine. There, so often in the depth of the wild, she captures in pen the stark forms of mountain maple, aspen, juniper, ash, scrub mahogany and towering cottonwood. She mixes these shapes with the lines she pulls from deep within hills and valleys, weaving them into her compositions in ways that speak of branch, trunk, limb, crotch and leaf as no one can. Later, she strengthens every line, painting each onto the surface of metal, layering her shapes with intense color, contrast and depth of light. Her work transcends the literal and is neither conceptual nor fully abstract. It has its own truth and tells story after story, as can only be told by someone who never tires of trees.
A S P C A N Y P E D E S T R I M U L T I F A R I O
E O A U
N N N S
S S S S
E E E E
R R R R
I I I I
E E E E
S S S S
Keith Pierce Commission, Acrylic on Aluminum, 48x46
A S P E N
S E R I E S
The quiet slips from the shadows of the aspen trees onto the grass. Lines of color fall on color. The air smells of moss or sage. Underfoot, leaves whisper on the ground. The trunks themselves have a patience, a collective memory of light and leaf, days where each burned with yellow and orange. They remember the year November left branches deep red against soft, dusty white. And the trunks are smooth to the touch, each line or scar raised, part of the patter that winds up each towering column, where thin young shapes twist between. In moonlight, the blue speaks like water, shadow within shadow, soundless stories of hillsides in snow, brittle summer, the fire of fall. And still in the silence the trees seem to talk, roots a net of fingers beneath soil, connecting hundreds, large and small, faces, skin, eyes, not many but one.
Prepositional repose, 48x60, Acrylic on Aluminium
Bull Run Aspen, 37x47, Acrylic on Aluminum
Teton Trunks, 32x37, Acrylic on Aluminum
It Was a Tuesday after Lunch, 48x48, Acrylic on Aluminum
Love Notes, 48x54, Acrylic on Aluminium
Two by Blue, Acrylic on Aluminum, 36x24
Country Oasis, 48x48, Acrylic on Aluminium
St. Joe Jostle, Acrylic on Aluminum
Twining Light, 34x32.5, Acrylic on Aluminium
Tree Whisperer, 48x48, Acrylic on Aluminium
Looking after Pea-Wee, Acrylic on Aluminum
Karma Kwake, 43.5x40.5
Boulder Basin Bingo, 48x44.25
C A N Y O N
S E R I E S
There’s a crack in an ocean of sandstone where the water flows, tiny at first, then dust grains grind stone to mud and it deepens. Clouds hang where basalt columns thrust skyward. Armored plants hang on the canyon rim. The sun beats, or the moon, and water rolls sometimes invisible, underground beneath hillsides of stone. Mahogany sharp and spined grows twisted in black gravel, repeated clumps of green on the canyon apron, perfect folds of sagebrush and shadow roll. So we wander downhill through slick stone basins where life grows from the cracks. Sun visits and passes. In a valley, stands of water pants grow a stone’s throw from cactus. Desert ironies and miracles. An ancient tree alone, limbs gnarled by wind and weather into wild flying curves.
Undercarriage overhang, 48x60, Acrylic on Aluminium
Osgood on the western front, 28x28, Acrylic on Aluminium
Give me a hand, 36x36, Acrylic on Aluminum
Iron Point, 12x10, Acrylic on Aluminum
Patio Trilogy, 48x38.75, Acrylic on Aluminium
Juniper JIg, Acrylic on Aluminum, 20.5x29
Mary’s Creek, Acrylic on Aluminum, 8 x 14.5
Cliff Top Sprawl, 48x60, Acrylic on Aluminium
Big Bend Beauties, Acrylic on Aluminum, 48x45
Border Line Red,19.75x34.5, Acrylic on Aluminium
Couloir Colors,.48x60, Acrylic on Aluminium
P O D E S T R I A N
S E R I E S
The green lady waits on a bench, moss purse, a rose like a scepter. The aspen trees listen for water nymphs, stripped knit under a tree of bright red birds. And we count four, not three, wearing solids and stripes, lacy fringe next to rough bark suit. A long arm crosses the sky. And for each figure, a landscape sets aside the passage of time, feet and roots spill blue shadow on soil which rolls to the lake shore. Sunlight and tanning oil burst into a chaos of color, pattern, voices. So she rests in the tree roots, wine colored wood folded into a throne. Leaves hang like clouds that one might one might sip or hold. But nearby, the evening light turns the aspen violet and pink. A woman of stone curls, in memory, in the desert, hers a repeated shape far from where magma heats bath water, and we wade, soak and laugh while the crows in the trees chatter and call.
Contemplating Cataldo, Acrylic on Aluminum, 36x48
Position of Perspective, 40x40, Acrylic on Aluminum
Flight Cap, 40x40, Acrylic on Aluminum
Yogi Forrest
Owyhee Blur Acrylic on Aluminum, 52.5x9
Lake Coeur d�Alene collective, Acrylic on Aluminum, 48x72
Tight Light, Acrylic on Aluminum, 21x12.25
Angle of Repose, Acrylic on Aluminum, 36x24
Elenor Levelor, Acrylic on Aluminum, 32.25 x 55
Beaches and sandy toes, Acrylic on Aluminum, 24 x48
Hide and Seek, Acrylic on Aluminum, 36x36
Family Pool, 48x60, Acrylic on Aluminum
M U L T I F A R I O U S
S E R I E S
Take my hand. We will run where the shadows fall indigo, climb ridges where the oldest trees grow. Look up where the branches twist. We can lie in the leaves until the sun fades, roll to watch blue darkness rise giving us the silhouettes of pine and maple, colors shifting with the light; slow burn of red to brown and black. And the sky will swallow the hills with green light, smoky dawn and dusk repeated. And we lie beneath a million trees. They flash one after another, color deeper than our eyes can hold. So we blink. The world still spins, slowly, delicate and imperceptible. The light still shifts, sky and branch morphing with time, like growth in slow motion. Limbs reach. Leaves fall. Shoots sprout. Spring unfurls. New canopies spread massive, green then yellow. Above us, it glows. In an instant, winter falls. In the wind, the sky roars like thunder, a universe of color gently tumbles down.
Walking Tree, 47x37, Acrylic on Aluminum
Homestead Spread , Acrylic on Aluminum,
The Local Branch, 48x48,Acrylic on Aluminum
River Watchman, 36.75x24, Acrylic on Aluminium
Emerald Pool, 37x47, Acrylic on Aluminum
Castle Lake Guardian, 32x37, Acrylic on Aluminum
Dancing on Rocks, 37x47, Acrylic on Aluminum
Fabulous in Fruita, Acrylic on Aluminum 39x32
A Stone in Hand 20x20, Acrylic on Aluminum
Cedars in the City, 24x40, Acrylic on Aluminum
Accumulative Canopy, 48x72, Acrylic on Aluminum
Brain Storm, 48x48, Acrylic on Aluminum
Colonel Mustard and Mrs. Plum, Acrylic on Aluminum, 45x48
The Silvery Moon, 48 x 36, Acrylic on Aluminum
Yellowstone Lodge Pole, 17x37, Acrylic on Aluminum
Simulated Sun, 36x60, Acrylic on Aluminum
JERRI LISK
CONTEMPORARY PAINTINGS ON METAL