Lynn Sisler
Portland, ME
Lynn Sisler is an American artist working in New England. Born in 1969, she received her MFA at Maine College of Art and a BFA from Northern Illinois University
Message
Lynn Sisler is an American artist working in New England. Born in 1969, she received her MFA at Maine College of Art in 2021 and completed a BFA in painting with a minor in Art History from Northern Illinois University in 1991. She is currently an associate professor at Springfield College and is represented by Elizabeth Moss Galleries in Portland, ME.
Sisler works in oil and pencil over a saturated acrylic ground, which reflects the underlying emotion and intention of the painting. Recent works borrow color from Werner’s Nomenclature, a collection of 19th-century swatches found in nature and used by naturalists. Interested in the idea of collective memory, Sisler often turns to her own childhood to talk about animals in various contexts. Captivated by the interconnectedness of ecology, her figures overlap, revealing new spaces. Sisler’s interpreted narratives feature animals, plants, and humans, often blended as one entity, in a magical, folkloric construct.
Statement
I’m captivated by interconnections through time and memory, but also between species within ecology. I came across the delightful collection of color swatches in the 19th-century text, Werner’s Nomenclature, that Charles Darwin used to identify colors in nature during his voyage on the HMS Beagle. This discovery acts as a road map of intentional hues, corresponding to the flora and fauna in my work. Like Darwin, I am also playing naturalist, finding and matching colors to beautiful creatures that come up in my remembrance. In this current series of paintings, I'm exploring what associations color can have when it is the foundation in a work, and how the painting’s process and story unfolds based on that initial hue. For instance, Childhood Fables is grounded in Werner’s swatch, bluish-green, the color of a thrush egg. But it reminds me of my painted-blue childhood bedroom and the various living and non-living animal figures that surrounded me there, witness to the journey to adulthood. It’s the color of memory, comfort, and a feeling of belonging. This particular blue is ethereal, wrapping itself around the earth as the sky; an ancient, protective, and connective membrane.