Lisa Meyer-Kairos

My paintings are concerned with layers, memory, history, nature, light, pattern, and contrasts.  These themes play out differently in each body of work, in different combinations, and to different effect. The paintings are layered in process and materials, and as they develop, they become complex, each with its own echoes of meaning, and each unique in mood and character.

The structural landscapes are studies in contrast:  Light and dark, imagination and reality, man made structure and nature.  They are comprised of many layers, often scraped back to reveal earlier painting.  They have a textural archeology that plays against the light coming through the structures.

Beeswax, oil paint, found papers, and drawing are all employed in the encaustic works.  They represent bits of memory, of childhood, of growing up.  Each layer is burned in with heat, and the effect is of luminous transparency within the painting.  

I have recently started painting with acrylics, and the bird series has been the result.  I find acrylic to be an incredibly flexible medium, and have been able to combine my oil and encaustic experience in my approach to these paintings. They have the brushwork of my earlier oils, with some of the more experimental collage and transparent layering aspects of the encaustics.  They are each embroidered with simple design, and this creates an additional layer of texture that plays on the surface of the painting.