Shape Divider

For me, painting is a state of reflection on human existence.The creative process - a journey with an unknown outcome. The beginning: a colour, a line of color that imprints a trace of my path on the canvas. Colours and forms condense here, which then themselves become the starting point for the next phase in the creation of the picture. This is the formal side of the creative process that develops, guided by my thematic guidelines: dealing with time, consciousness, memory and social reality.

PICTURES BETWEEN DEPTH AND SOUND
On the painting by Lisa Lyskava
It is impossible to write about Lisa Lyskava's paintings without also commenting on the artist's personality, and this is where self-discipline is required if one does not want to get bogged down in detail. Lisa Lyskava is full of ideas and full of energy. A look at her vita gives an idea of ​​the fascination she has for the phenomenon of the new, which needs to be discovered. There are the written word and the music, the theater and the moving image of the film, and finally there is the painting.

BEAUTIFUL SUNDAY
Exhibition at Schloss Opherdicke, Unna, June to August 1992

WDR Radio Dortmund, June 12, 1992

 ... If colors can celebrate, here they do in Lisa Lyskava's paintings. All hell is loose in the wide, bright rooms on the first floor of the museum:Splash – an exuberant violet has spread across the big screen and is now shooting from below straight towards the center of the picture. Their color rivals, orange and yellow, can hardly keep up – first getting annoyed by green, then blue and finally lounging around in scattered spots. But - who is that - a deep, thickly applied dark blue has approached the emerging violet from the right - and, as soon as the two have touched, they are already inflamed fiery red for each other. Who would have thought that, completely contrary to color theory.

The relationship between Abstract Expressionist painting and jazz is a logical one, since both rely to a large extent on improvisation. It began in New York City in the nineteen forties and fifties, when there was a lively interplay between so called “action painters” and bebop musicians although the influence tended to flow more from music to painting, rather than the other way around.

Jazz and Zen Buddhism have long been associated in Beat Generation mythology. This is particularly evident in the novels of Jack Kerouac and in the poetry of Gary Snyder. But no visual artist we know of has stitched those elements together as successfully as Lisa Lyskava, whose Jazzing Up exhibition runs through November 13 at the National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South.

Lisa Lyskava, born in Münster, Germany, in 1949, lives and works in Germany and in New York. Jazz music is her inspiration. When painting, jazz is her constant companion. Her motor impetus and choice of colors are inspired by the infectious rhythms and melodies of this music.