Lisa Kairos

My paintings explore the relationship between natural and human environments. I am drawn to landscapes that combine nature and utility, usually the remainders and margins of urban space or land that have been shaped by use, infrastructure, and sometimes restoration. I look for a glitch of beauty in unexpected places, a moment of slippage and surprise, and focus on areas where one type of space transitions to another: shadow to light, burn pile to ash, tidal marsh to open water. Where one thing becomes another, I find a metaphor for transformation.

In my studio, I work in transparent layers, staining, painting, and drawing. I combine and recombine imagery, creating visual fields that hold the emotional signature of the places I’ve explored. I interrupt painterly spaces with geometry and line, a shift in scale, or by cutting and rearranging the picture plane in an effort to create perceptual ambiguity. Gestural passages mingle with cartographical and technological references. The result is a complex of color, form, and line and a sense of floating space. 

Available Works