Liesel Lund
Whidbey Island, WA
Liesel is a full time artist who creates joyful impressionistic oil paintings with a focus on color and expressive brushwork.
MessageLiesel’s love of nature and color reflects her upbringing- growing up in Seattle with its strong connection to the water and mountains that surround it, and being raised by a family rich in creativity. Her grandmother was a talented fiber and ceramic artist who sold her handmade ceramic beads at her shop and at the juried Bellevue Arts and Crafts Fair. Her mom, talented fabric artist and author of two instructional books on quilting also demonstrates her amazing eye for color in her large English style garden.
She has worn many creative hats. As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand, she created a nature education center at Doi Luang National Park. Later, she designed graphics for Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo Butterflies and Blooms exhibit, children’s books for McGraw-Hill, and textile prints for Tommy Bahama. She also designed one-of-a-kind jewelry for local stores and for Mike Carroll Gallery in Hawaii.
In 2008, she left the design field to be a full time artist and workshop instructor, sharing her love of art with others. She has taught at Daniel Smith Art Store and has led workshops at art retreats in Texas, Illinois, New Jersey and California. She is a featured artist in Creative Wildfire by LK Ludwig, and Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists by Carla Sonheim.
Liesel studied fine art and scientific illustration at the Evergreen State College, the University of Washington, and at the Gage Academy of Art. Once she settled upon oils and her favorite medium she took workshops with Dreama Tolle Perry, Sally Strand, Jeff Legg, Ingrid Christensen and Maggie Siner. Along the way she discovered her love with creating visual and surface texture with the paint. She continues to explore how color and brushstrokes convey emotion. When the weather is nice, she is often out painting outdoors, recording first hand the sights, sounds and feeling of a place directly into the paint. This work is balanced by her studio work where she works from her photographs and her own still life set ups.
Now living on Whidbey Island, she draws inspiration from the gardens, woods, water and farmland surrounding her. Her art has an intimacy about it - you are immersed in the painting rather than seeing the subject from a grand distance. She uses this intimacy, the colors and brushwork to describe the beauty of a moment and place in time. Her collectors frequently describe her work as “Full of life”, “Uplifting”, “Joyful”, “I just like the way it makes me feel”, and “I feel better just looking at this painting.” This quality of joy that she infuses her art with, is very intentional.
“We are all facing a variety of challenges in our lives and in the greater world around us. I think it is so important to balance that by focusing on the people and things that bring us joy. I’ve had several paintings purchased by couples as their anniversary gift and have had many collectors hang my paintings in their bedrooms so that it would be the first thing they saw in the morning. I can’t begin to tell you how happy that makes me to know that my art uplifts others.”
Statement
My oil paintings are impressionistic florals and landscapes created with a variety of marks and vibrant colors. Frequently I zoom in to my subject so that viewers feel that they could reach in and touch the scene just a few feet away.
I often paint outdoors where I look for contrasting light, rich color and dynamic compositions in the landscape. I have only two to three hours to paint before the sun’s movement greatly alters the lighting of the scene. A dramatic sky and a changing shoreline also have to be captured quickly. These aspects make painting outdoors exhilarating and challenging.
For large paintings, I work in my studio where I have the luxury of building a painting over many sessions. My approach in all my work is to start with a clear vision and, as I go along, to be open to ideas that pop up as it evolves. Working this way keeps the act of painting exciting and creates work that I feel is more lively and joyful.
Watercolor was the first medium I fell in love with. Later, oils won me over with their viscosity and vivid color. Now I include methods from both mediums in my paintings. I like the variety of marks these techniques create: drips, thick slabs, crisp edges, and soft shapes. My greatest challenge is keeping a balance between all these delicious marks while still building cohesive shapes that represent reality - even if an impressionistic one. If you look closely at my work, you often will see hints of earlier marks peeking out between the top layers.
The comment I hear most often when people view my work is how joyful my paintings are. In talking with collectors, I have found that they frequently hang my work in treasured spaces in their home. They display them in their bedrooms to be seen upon awakening, in favorite nooks to be enjoyed while they have their coffee, and in the center of their home where they can be seen frequently.
© 2024 Liesel Lund - all rights reserved.