Once Lisa Tureson decided to leave her career in the insurance industry, there was no stopping her from exploring and learning about the many techniques, materials and tools artists use to express themselves. Actually, she probably always did have a curious and exploratory bent. At age four Lisa often watched her artist-teacher mother at the easel. Thusly inspired, her first murals were created out of her mother’s lip stick on her sisters’ bedroom walls. Whether she was chastised for her use of the lipstick medium or praised for her ambitious wall-size art expression, this “project” proved a precursor to the large paintings in her present day solo exhibit Scribbles: An Urban Art Expression at Touchstone Gallery during March 2017.

Being a self-directed person, the more classes Lisa took, the more she wanted to learn. She studied how to paint her specific areas of interest from working artists with teaching studios all over the world. She sought out the experts in areas such as mural painting, gilding, graining and trompe l’oeil. Add to that: how to paint on glass, antique mirror and create all manner of plaster surfaces that constitute her very broad portfolio. Now her mixed media paintings reveal an accrual of many techniques, which gives them a textural flavor that delights the appetite for her abstract, non-objective works.

Since Lisa began painting professionally in 2001, her career has coalesced into three diverse branches.

Commissioned paintings for the design community. These are usually site specific, although some can be seen in design center showrooms. In 2016 her 6’ x7’ painting Koibenhavn was featured and sold in the DC Design House, benefiting the Children’s National Health System.
Paintings for displaying in art galleries are the spontaneous-looking creations that belie the hard work Lisa puts into each one. She eschews paint brushes in favor of plastic (like credit) cards, trowels, blades, palette knives, spreaders, Ink-tense, watercolor crayons and pencils, acrylics, clear coat varnish, smooth plaster and rough plasters. Add to that paper collage elements or photographically painted elements that replicate a collaged element (a trompe l'oeil effect).
Published commercial work is usually geared to a certain niche in the art-print market. Many of her licensed images are found in Department stores, Home Goods Stores and home decorating catalogs. Some are limited signed editions and other are unsigned open-edition prints.

Lisa’s paintings in Scribbles; An Urban Art Interpretation are based on a Copenhagen city wall whose cracked paint stopped her in her tracks. Entranced with the complexities of that surface, she began this series of paintings which have a soft graffiti look that only a combination of smooth and coarse plaster, imbedded papers and drawings, and colored inks can accomplish. Some works bring to mind a phrase from American abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, “There are those fleeting moments, those almost 'supernatural states of soul', as Baudelaire call them, during which 'the profundity of life is entirely revealed in any scene, however ordinary, that presents itself to one.’” Viewers can get a sense of this in Lisa Tureson’s solo paintings on exhibit during March at Touchstone Gallery. –Rosemary Luckett

Opening Reception: Friday March 3, 6 - 8:30pm; Encore Reception: Sunday March 26, 2 – 4pm; Touchstone Gallery, 901 New York Avenue NW Washington DC 20001

Wed-Fri 11-6 Sat-Sun12-5; 202-347-2787

www.touchstonegallery.com; info@touchstonegallery.com