'The Hearth,' by Lisa Miceli, Watercolor on Paper Painting

This 10" x 11" watercolor on paper painting by Lisa Miceli depicts an imaginative abstracted landscape suggestive of a warm hearth setting. 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 warm orange/yellow triangle evokes the image of a hearth, the center of a home which can provide warmth, light and protection, and the triangle symbolizing stability, harmony and balance. Above the triangle are iconic figures, ancestors who observe the lives below and provide guidance or example through their legacy in washes of olive green, burgundy, and brown on a grey-blue background.

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.