Lisa Shinault
Decatur, GA
Lisa Shinault aka LiShinault is a Georgia-based figurative artist implementing multiple material techniques and rearrangeable compositions.
Message
Lisa Shinault is a multidisciplinary figurative painter whose surrealist artwork includes oil with mixed media on manipulated sewn canvas, ceramic tile, mosaic, reverse glass painted collage, and three dimensional interactive shaped wood panel paintings. She goes by Lisa, but refers to her art and often herself as LiShinault (a portmanteau of her full name). LiShinault has cultivated a style of work that showcases sublime female figures and animals with a surreal twist. Her artworks as well as several commissions grace the walls of many private collections. She has worked as a designer and painter for custom ceramic tile muralists and decorative arts companies. King and Spalding, LLP, include her works in their collection as does ARTSATL writer Jerry Cullum. LiShinault is a 2019 fellow of Hambidge Residency for the Creative Arts and Sciences. She received a grant from the Judith Alexander Foundation in 2020. Atlanta public radio station WABE 90.1 FM featured her in an interview for “City Lights with Lois Reitzes: Speaking of the Arts” in 2021.
LiShinault currently designs, experiments, and creates at Little Tree Studios #113 in Avondale Estates as well as her home studio in Decatur, GA.
Statement
My interest in painting at a young age evolved after working in a visual display job with mannequins in which I often changed the look of the window art. With this interest in images that change, I began to change and manipulate my own oil on canvas paintings by cutting them apart and sewing them together into new juxtapositions.
The freedom to cut apart and put together has transformed into a series of work called “Dressing Room”. Much like giant paper dolls, I use a wood panel as a base for painted figures instead of paper. I create ‘outfits’ that can be repositioned so that they can be taken off, hung elsewhere, or placed back onto the main figure. The ‘outfits’ mostly take the form of a dress, but others resemble birdlike creatures that transform the figure to expose a spiritual alter ego from nature.
The “Dressing Room” series and other rearrangeable multi-panel paintings are my current favored media, however I also still create figurative paintings with mixed media on canvas, which I have done for over 30 years. Alongside those, I create smaller media with ceramic tile paintings, mosaics, reverse glass paintings, and LiShinault art inspired necklace pendants.