Submerging

'Submerging,' by Lisa Miceli, Watercolor on Paper Painting

This 15" x 22" watercolor on paper painting by Lisa Miceli depicts an imaginative abstracted landscape. This painting is part of the "latticeWorks Series." The use of color and compositional elements in this series help the viewer stay in the painting and interpret what they see through their own experience and observation. Many of the images and figures are purposely left ambiguous so that the viewer can develop their own narrative based on the meanings of the symbols or images for them. This ambiguity also allows for images to have more than one meaning, and to reflect the multiple facets of human nature.

The fluid images in this painting are set against a warm background reflecting themes of submergence and emergence, the figures in the painting being are at different stages of this process. Symbols and forms reflect the ways in which people relate to the natural world and the sea and how we are in a continual cycle of renewal. The dynamic shapes are in colors of blue, rust, green, and orange.

Lisa Miceli is a studio and plein-air painter who teaches studio and plein-air painting at the Mystic Museum of Art, Lyme Art Association, Avondale Arts in Rhode Island, and on Fishers Island, New York. Lisa is-co chair of the New England Watercolor Society “Brushes with Nature” plein air painting program, and is a member of the Noank 9 plein air painting group. Lisa’s works hang in galleries throughout New England including Arnould Gallery in Marblehead, MA, the Plymouth Center for the Arts in Plymouth, MA, Mystic Museum of Art, Lyme Art Association in Old Lyme, CT, Thames River Gallery in New London, CT, Avondale Arts in Rhode Island, and the Bryan Memorial Gallery in VT.

She is currently featured in a three-person show "Points of View" at Thames River Gallery in New London, and had a solo watercolor Show at Studio 33 Gallery in New London in 2020. Recent juried shows include the New England Watercolor Society North American Open Juried Exhibition in Plymouth, MA, the NEWs Brushes with Nature plein air show and Instructors Show, the Connecticut Plein Air Painters Society Juried Members Exhibition, the CT River Museum “Hands on the Land” show, and juried shows at Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, Lyme Art Association in Old Lyme, CT and the Mystic Museum of Art.

Lisa’s abstract expressionist painting, “How the World Opened,” was awarded the Pamela J. Nelson Watercolor Award by Patricia Hickson, Emily Hall Tremaine curator of Contemporary art at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and Lisa was winner of the 2020 JMW Turner watercolor competition at the Mystic Seaport Museum.

Lisa studied watercolor painting with British watercolorist Ron Ranson, with Bob Noreika at the Lyme Art Association, Howard Park at the Mystic Museum of Art, and with instructors at Granite Street Gallery in New London. A significant influence on her painting was her grandmother, Lucille Gauthier who was an illustrator, watercolorist, and a WPA artist. Lisa has a doctorate in clinical psychology and her previous work as a clinical psychologist and trauma therapist has influenced her appreciation of the human condition which is integral to her art.