October 3 - November 25
Lisa Charles – Thread Painting Will be on display in the Northern Trust Gallery from October 3 to November 25. Join us Friday, October 4th from 5 -7 PM for the opening reception of this exhibition.
For the last twelve years Lisa Charles has used her skills, learned while fashioning wearable art, to create photo-realistic machine-stitched images using her home sewing machine. Her work is represented in both private and corporate collections. She has been featured in Threads Magazine and The Sheridan Press. She has received several awards for her wearable art. In 2015, she was awarded Third Place in the 2015 SAGE 5th Annual Juried Art Show for her thread painting “Bad Hair Day”. She received Best of Show 2019 at FACE of Fiber in the Rockies, held in Estes Park, CO, for her portrait of an alpaca, “Anjolie”.
Lisa has exhibited her fiber art multiple times in The Brinton Museum’s Small Works Shows. Her Northern Trust Gallery presentation is her first one-person exhibition at the museum.
“I am a thread painter who uses free motion embroidery techniques to create depth of field and intricate detailing to tell stories of beauty, often told with humor. My love of color draws me toward imagery of plant life, such as seen in “Ornamental Banana”. For this work, I played the subtle shifts in jewel tones against the quiet backdrop to set off the explosion of petals and budding fruit. My intention was to draw the viewer into my memories of a tropical paradise.
With animals, wildlife, and children, I am always searching for the lighthearted perspective. I achieve this quality with detailed drawing of quirky facial expressions that give these subjects their own personal character. In “Bad Hair Day”, I loved capturing the wild, frazzled feathers atop her head but think the set of her mouth and gaze of her eye say it all; we’ve all been there.
When I tackled the landscape “When Planes Meet Trains”, I wanted to see if I could incorporate natural elements – grasses, hillside, trees, and a river – with manmade forms, the plane meeting the train, the overpass, and the fence. Ultimately, I hoped to show not only the beauty of nature but that manmade objects have a beauty of their own.
My process is akin to completing a jigsaw puzzle and starts well before I place a single stitch. I begin with a visual reference and make copious notes detailing the myriad colors within the layers. From there I create color charts of stitches annotated with the thread information. Some paintings take up to a year to complete; almost all have three or more layers of stitching. I use multiple layers because the threads are opaque but layered on top of one another they blend into the actual color I want to finish with—like mixing paints. Because I am dyslexic, I have a unique artist/engineering perspective: I can see the entire surface of a painting and how each stitch will interact with the whole composition, all while anticipating where the next stitch will land.”
Lisa Charles
Generously supported by:
