{"id":89975,"date":"2025-02-03T10:34:30","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T17:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=89975"},"modified":"2025-02-24T12:03:44","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T19:03:44","slug":"inspired-by-betye-saar-laurie-lisonbee-reimagines-history-with-paint-and-found-objects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/inspired-by-betye-saar-laurie-lisonbee-reimagines-history-with-paint-and-found-objects\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspired by Betye Saar, Laurie Lisonbee Reflects on Ancestry, Memory and the Alchemy of Art"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Laurie Lisonbee, “Out of Hand,” oil, mixed media, gold leaf on panel with drill bits, rulers, and found objects, 26 x 16 x 2 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

For Laurie Lisonbee, art is a meditative, almost metaphysical process. \u201cArt is a fascinating search for something that is coming into consciousness and making itself known,\u201d she explains. \u201cThe process of artmaking then gives physicality to what was formerly intangible and unknown.\u201d Her paintings combine traditional realism with distressed surfaces and found objects in what she calls \u201ca constructivist process of assemblage.\u201d Whether integrating stones, shells, or antique tools, these objects become imbued with meaning, transforming into meditation pieces or dream symbols when juxtaposed with her figures.<\/h4>\n

Lisonbee was born in Riverside, California and received an MFA from California State University Fullerton. She has taught art at colleges and universities in Utah, California and Texas, and now works out of her home studio in Woodland Hills, Utah.<\/h4>\n

Gestures of the human form in her paintings often hint at personal loss, devotionals, rituals, and yearnings. “My figurative paintings are clearly rooted in Western, traditional realism, influenced by Renaissance to 20th-century masters, especially Degas, Cassatt, Sargent, Silverman\u2014the list goes on. Eastern spiritual practice is also a strong presence in my work,” she says. “But early on, I was dazzled by Betye Saar’s<\/a> poignant assemblages.”<\/h4>\n
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Beyte Saar, “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” (1972), at the Smithsonian American Art Museum<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

During her formative years as an artist in Los Angeles, Lisonbee encountered Saar\u2019s poignant tableaus in museums. “I’ll never forget standing unsettled before one of her pieces, a cluster of antique doll parts that raised volumes of questions about women, race, and society,” she says. “<\/span>Her artistic expression spans vast territory in works that are at once personal, feminist, spiritual, ancestral, mystical, political\u2014sometimes whimsical, and always provocative.\u201d\u00a0 Saar, now in her late 90s, continues to exhibit and attract attention.<\/span><\/h4>\n
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“I am so intrigued by developments in the early twentieth century, when relativity theory jolted the reign of realistic painting, replacing it with spatial ambiguity and visual tricks of space, with artworks straddling two, three, and four dimensions,” Lisonbee says. “Betye Saar and other assemblage artists further turned painting on its head by incorporating real stuff into paintings, so their works defied easy classification and became sculptural objects. I find that the relationship between the painted illusion of form and actual, tangible form is at the top of the list of most compelling things to explore in art-making.”<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Saar’s <\/span>ability to integrate objects into her work inspired Lisonbee to explore the relationship between painted illusion and tangible form. “Saar made me aware that I relish the interplay between the painted illusion of reality and the tangible reality of the object. I love to scour antique stores for oddball items imbued with their own history, energy, and provenance. It\u2019s like the object has a spirit. Like Saar, I gravitate to items that call out to me for a ‘second life’ in a piece of art. In Saar’s words: ‘The materials conjure ideas. The ideas conjure images. The images conjure art.’<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Laurie Lisonbee, “Shelf Life,” oil, collage, and gold leaf on panel with found object of antique cast iron hands, 40 x 29 x 7 in.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The resonance of Saar\u2019s work came full circle for Lisonbee in 2019 when she discovered a transformative aspect of her personal history: her third great-grandmother was a Black LDS woman whose father was a free Black sea captain working on the Underground Railroad. “These nearly simultaneous events were transformative for my identity, my worldview, and my art-making. Much of my recent and current work confronts the faulty narratives of my ancestral heritage. Betye Saar’s early and lasting impact on my work feels far more prescient and weighty than I could ever have imagined when as a young artist I was first enthralled with her work.”<\/span><\/h4>\n

Much like Saar\u2019s assemblages, Lisonbee\u2019s work invites open-ended dialogue, raising challenging questions without easy answers. “[Saar] packs so much of the personal, the poetic, and the political into her eloquent assemblages, with ample ambiguity to grant her audience space for their own open- ended discourse with the pieces. The way her art gives no glib answers but raises challenging questions, resonates with my sensibilities. Saar’s playful but charged imagery lines up with my thinking that art is at its best when it opens doors to quandaries and mysteries.”<\/span><\/h4>\n

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Laurie Lisonbee’s oil paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries across the United States, including the BYU Museum of Art, Palm Springs Art Museum, and St. George Art Museum. Represented by ‘A ‘Gallery of Salt Lake City, her works have earned numerous regional and national awards and are held in both public and private collections. You can see more of her artwork at http:\/\/www.laurielisonbee.com<\/a>.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Laurie Lisonbee, art is a meditative, almost metaphysical process. \u201cArt is a fascinating search for something that is coming into consciousness and making itself known,\u201d she explains. \u201cThe process of artmaking then gives physicality to what was formerly intangible and unknown.\u201d Her paintings combine traditional realism with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1600,"featured_media":90043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,2238],"tags":[611],"class_list":["post-89975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual_arts","category-who-do-you-love","tag-laurie-lisonbee"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Lisonbee_Out-of-Hand-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 08:57:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89975"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90145,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89975\/revisions\/90145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}