ROOTS

Lisa Mullikin was born in Washington, DC and received her Masters of Architecture from the University of Maryland. She worked in Washington, London, New York, San Francisco, Louisiana and Tennessee as an architect and teacher. Her focus has been on historical restoration and sustainable design. During her time in San Francisco she began painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, and while teaching at Louisiana Tech University she began plein air painting in the Art Department under Professor Peter Jones. The biweekly trips to the university farm and the small town of Ruston inspired a connection to the landscape through explorations in painting. 

 

CONNECTION TO PLACE

Her artistic inquiries are focused on the relationships we have with regional landscapes: the geography, geology, history and, most interesting, the layered cultural connections we have to PLACE. This became especially important when moving to Tennessee, where the underground landscape tells a story of shifting earth, rock formations, and the dark voids left as remnants that hold space for a complex organic world. This “other world” is contrasted with the repose above ground, full of matter that absorbs, reflects, and refracts sunlight, and is, in some ways, subdued by human occupation. The two worlds seem, at times, oblivious to each other, and yet are deeply dependent and interconnected. She recenlty relocated to the North Carolina coast, where the landscape reveals a different set of relationships between the placid land, dynamic sky and the formidable ocean. 

 

PERSONAL CONNECTIONS

Several years ago she began incorporating collage to express texture and structure. Dressmaking patterns are often used as a motif that recall growing up with her mother; the dress patterns spread across the living room floor to make clothes.  For a short interim it provided a tranquil and rational activity that was in dire need at the time. "When I look at patterns and maps, I recall a wayfinding technique that is familiar and comforting in a landscape that is shadowy and mysterious."

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