Congratulations to our

2nd Place Award of Excellence Winner 

Lisa Bryson

Lisa was awarded second place for her oil painting

The Satirical Self-Portrait: Gilded Age II.

About Lisa:

Lisa is a San Diego, California, native. She has a BFA in painting from Arizona State University and an MA in Art Education from Boston University. In May 2017, Lisa was awarded a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and was granted a Teaching Fellowship from UMD. Her work has shown regionally, nationally and internationally. In April of 2018, Lisa was awarded a prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant in painting. She and her mother, Susan Salazar, currently share a studio in the Arts District at Liberty Station.

From a very young age, art provided a voice for Lisa.  She was a very shy, quiet individual and found interaction with people most puzzling; however, with art she found strength, comfort, and the ability to share a point of view–her own.  Drawing was her initial entry into “art”, but later in life, painting became all-consuming and the primary vehicle for sharing her quirky take on the world. 

Recent Juried Exhibitions:
2020 Women Artists Making Their Mark, O’Hanlon Center for the Arts online exhibition, Jurors: Donna Seager and Suzanne Gray of the Seager Gray Gallery, CA
2020 Annual Juried Exhibition, Front Porch Gallery, Carlsbad, CA
2019 Sinks and Chairs, Manifest Creative Research Gallery, Cincinnati, OH 

2018 14^thAnnual Magnitude Seven, Manifest Creative Research Gallery, Cincinnati, OH

2018 Small Works Exhibition, Dedee Shattuck Gallery, Dartmouth, MA

Lisa explains why she created Satirical Self-Portrait: Gilded Age II:
The Satirical Self-Portrait: Gilded Age II, just recently completed, is in response to the tumultuous political scene playing out in our country. The fatigue of COVID, the financial strain, the sense of isolation and the ongoing power play of our two parties quashed the last bit of hope from my psyche. With a compelling need to voice such overwhelming, all-consuming distaste for all things political, an epiphany struck–paint myself as Queen (embodiment of power and opulence) adorned with gilded earrings displaying both donkey and elephant, and wearing a regal wig topped with the ol’ Red, White and Blue, the flag as fashion rather than revered. Bigger than life. But, truly, the title, Satirical Self-Portrait: Gilded Age II alludes to the driving narrative-harken to the Gilded Age in America (first penned by Mark Twain, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today), a time where greedy, corrupt industrialists, bankers and politicians enjoyed obscene wealth and opulence at the expense of the working class. Does this sound familiar? Different time, different faces, same narrative–extraordinary–Gilded Age II.

Lisa’s web site: http://www.lbryson.com