From The Collection: Lisa Pressman

Lisa Pressman, Talking, 48” x 38”, Pigment Stick® on Gessobord, 2016

If you’ve had the opportunity to visit R&F Handmade Paints in Kingston, New York during the last two years, chances are you’ve seen R&F Core Instructor Lisa Pressman’s stunning piece Talking, which hangs just to the left of the entrance to production. A native of New Jersey, Pressman received her BA in fine art from Douglass College, Rutgers University and her MFA in painting from Bard College. She has been exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions since 1981 and her work is in numerous private and public collections. Pressman embraces “materials, touch, and their interplay as driving forces” to produce paintings that embody “a visual synthesis of stored memory.”

She is represented by Susan Eley Fine Arts in New York, Addington Gallery in Chicago, and The Gallery of Fine Arts in Telluride. In 2020, Pressman’s work will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Mulvane Art Museum in Topeka, Kansas. She recently co-curated A Sense of Place in Contemporary Encaustic at the ICE Gallery of Monmouth University and will be co-curating an upcoming exhibition titled The Blues at The Painting Center in New York City.

Pressman is a highly respected instructor who maintains a vigorous teaching schedule throughout the United States and internationally. In addition to teaching, Pressman offers mentoring, portfolio review, and private workshops for artists. Her teaching focuses on cultivating the visual voice of each student.

Artist Lisa Pressman in front of Talking

In 2016, Pressman received several boxes of numbered R&F Pigment Sticks® for her to product test. Sending stuff to working artists is a common way for us to get feedback on colors we are considering bringing into our paint lines. The paints sat in Pressman’s studio for a while as she contemplated how best to test them.

One day she decided to paint with them as a way to see how they moved. Using two large Ampersand Gessobords, she started by incorporating the numbers from each color selection into her work. She wrote the number of the color onto the first panel and used the second panel as a place to “off shoot excess paint.” Working with Pigment Sticks® in this way reminded Pressman of graffiti; it felt as if the colors were speaking to one another.

By the time Pressman reached number 16, she was full on painting.

Of the original 29 colors Pressman received to product test, R&F chose 12 for their Pigment Stick® line and 11 for encaustic that year. Pressman says of the experience that it was a really fun way to approach painting. The best part was that when it was all said and done, R&F decided to purchase her painting for their permanent collection.

You can see more of Lisa Pressman’s work and find out about her 2020 workshops by visiting lisapressman.net.