As a Carolina artist, author, and illustrator, Connected Collage is Lisa's unique style of creative expression. Each watercolor painting is meticulously built by hand connecting smaller watercolor elements together to create the larger cut-torn watercolor artwork, sometimes building each piece as mixed-media collage. She continues to grow her artistry gaining inspiration from the dynamism of the natural world and working with mentor and peer artists and associates of numerous organizations over many years: SCBWI, Seacoast Artist Guild, Trenholm Artist Guild, McCormick Arts Council at the Keturah (MACK) Artists Guild, Pat Conroy Literary Center, NAWA, and NAWA SC. She is honored to have taught Connected Collage workshops and writing for all ages in various locations: Beaufort's Camp Conroy Build-A-Book program, Beaufort Middle School, Seacoast Artist Gallery, John de la Howe SC Governor's School for Agriculture, and Columbia's Richland Library. She graduated from Vermont College of Fine Arts with an MFA in writing, pairing her studies with art, illustration, and photography. All Carolina Folktales, her three most recent author-illustrated picture books are Little Orange Honey Hood and Three Wild Pigs (University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, SC), and Haskell & Greta (Quantum 8 Press, LLC). Countess Couture Art of the Carolinas, Quantum 8 Press, LLC, is her studio art and publishing company. She lives near the coastal Carolinas border with her husband and enjoys a sun-filled scene of oaks, pampas grass, pines, and palm trees flourishing just outside her studio windows.
About
Artist Statement
Why is bleeding of color in water exquisitely magical? Just as our creative spirit flows like a river, it seems nature intended art's act as existential mimicry all along. Like consciousness ebbing into deep sleep, composition bends within light and rests in its own delicate balance of darkness. Side-by-side, images, colors, and elements become one connected body revealing a single breath, a tick-tock moment in newfound existence, infinite with purpose. I call it Connected Collage. Through buoyancy of voice, art sings when seen, felt within. As an artist, reflective, dare I yield such arduous humility in practice, in preach? Yes.