ART BLOG  – 05/02/2018

So far the weekly evening lectures at Falmouth School of Art have focussed on some interesting artists whose work is new to me. Lisa Milroy was the latest candidate to take the stage and fill in the gaps in my comprehension of modern art.

A practitioner of still life in the 1980s, her work doesn’t focus on the normal bowl of fruit, flowers, wine glasses or skulls seen in many Renaissance still life pieces.  Instead, her paintings feature ordinary objects such as shoes, lemons or doughnuts. Her stylistic renderings reflect her contemplation of duality, composition & placement, surface & object, presence & absence. Her shoes reflect on the concept of being part of a pair or being an individual.

Lisa enlightened the audience with her thought processes behind her paintings, explaining that the shoes are a device for expressing emotion. That the repetition of painting them gave her a sense of knowing, that she had truly experienced the object. She also confessed to a certain amount of loss when the artwork was complete and their study had ended. She likened this to an appetite, a need, a hunger to know the objects every detail and appreciate its every possibility.

Lisa Milroy was born in Vancouver but works mainly in London. She won First Prize in the John Moores Painting Prize in 1989and was an Artist Trustee of the Tate from 2013 -17. Her work is exhibited widely on the international and national stage and is held in many public and private collections.