Installation of Acts of Small Repair, May 2026
My work explores memory, loss, and the traces we leave behind. Through painting, collage, thread, smoke, and fragmented language, I create surfaces that feel excavated rather than constructed—objects that carry evidence of time, use, and transformation.
Working intuitively, I build and disrupt each piece through layering, burning, stitching, covering, and revealing. Fragments of text, marks, and symbols emerge and disappear, functioning less as fixed messages than as remnants of experience. The work exists in the space between what can be recovered and what remains unknowable.
The loss of my son profoundly altered my relationship to materials and process. Acts of burning, mending, and reconstruction became ways of thinking through absence, memory, and continuity. Rather than illustrating personal narrative, the work reflects on how experience is carried in objects, surfaces, and accumulated traces.
Whether in paintings, works on paper, or sculptural wall pieces, I am interested in the intersection of fragility and resilience. Torn edges, stitched seams, smoke stains, and layered surfaces suggest artifacts that have endured change. These works invite viewers to consider what is preserved, what is lost, and how meaning shifts over time.
Ultimately, my practice is an act of discovery. By allowing materials to record their own history, I seek to create work that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant—where memory remains fluid, and every surface holds the possibility of revelation.
Biography
Lisa Pressman is a visual artist and educator whose abstract paintings explore memory, materiality, and transformation. Based in New Jersey, she works across encaustic, oil, cold wax, and mixed media, layering and manipulating surfaces through scraping, burning, stitching, and mark-making. These tactile processes reflect an ongoing engagement with themes of impermanence, grief, and the passage of time. Pressman's compositions often feature luminous color relationships, gestural energy, and excavated textures that evoke both ancient manuscripts and contemporary artifacts.
Her work invites close observation, revealing traces of language, symbolic marks, and richly worked surfaces that suggest both presence and absence. Since the loss of her son in 2019, her material choices and rituals—burning, sewing, layering—have become deeply connected to mourning and memory. Each piece becomes a meditation on what remains, where discovery unfolds through process and perception.
Pressman earned her MFA in Painting from Bard College and a BA in Fine Arts (Ceramics and Sculpture) from Douglass College, Rutgers University. She has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions across the U.S., including at Susan Eley Fine Art (New York and Hudson, NY), Addington Gallery (Chicago), The Painting Center (NYC), Causey Contemporary, and R&F Handmade Paints. Notable solo shows include Messages (2023), Downtown Debut (2022), and Passing Through (2015). Her work has also been exhibited internationally and appears in numerous corporate and private collections, including Hyatt Regency, McKinsey Financial, Omni Hotels, and Sun Chemical Corporation.
In addition to her studio practice, Pressman is a sought-after educator and workshop leader, teaching nationally and internationally at universities, art centers, and conferences, including The International Encaustic Conference (Provincetown, MA), where she has also curated and presented digital studio tours. She has served as a juror and curator, most recently for The Blue Show at The Painting Center (NYC) and Sense of Place at Monmouth University.
Her work has been featured in Cold Wax Medium by Rebecca Crowell and Jerry McLaughlin, the Huffington Post, Art Speak, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among others.
She is represented by Susan Eley Fine Art (NYC and Hudson, NY) and Addington Gallery (Chicago).
“Her work is emotionally intense, laden with the acute joys and sorrows that can only be accessed through profound suffering. She shares her journey with a deep generosity of spirit, and we want to travel with her, knowing that on some level it’s our journey as well.”
Meg Hitchcock, In the Studios blog
The notion of what lingers beneath the surface is a driving force in her practice. Language appears in glimpses—familiar yet unreadable, dissolving into gestures. The marks she creates exist in a space between recognition and obscurity, emphasizing the fluid nature of memory and perception. Her compositions suggest containment yet resist definitive interpretation, inviting viewers into a quiet, open-ended dialogue of discovery.
The death of her son in 2019 profoundly influenced Lisa’s work, deepening her relationship with materiality. Burned marks, red-thread sutures, and layered surfaces became both acts of remembrance and reconstruction, embodying the resilience of transformation. Through layering and excavation, her work become meditations on what remains, marking time in a way that feels both intimate and universal.
