Our artists: Lisa Knox

Lisa Knox's evocative and stark charcoal drawings of old underwear create a powerful sense of history of the owner.

She wrties, "When articles of clothing are unfolded and tacked to the wall, fact and fiction become entwined– the party dress when deprived of its wearer retains a myriad of complex social, psychological and sensory associations. I use clothing to evoke memory, sensation, nostalgia and loss. In as much, a garment is more akin to memento mori than traditional still life. For instance, I look up and see a dress. I look down and paint an artifact, a fossil, a molted transparent shell from another time. Though I analyze the dress as I would an object in a still life, I render the form to evoke the transitory passage of time – knowing that the garments’ owner has grown older and changed. My ultimate hope is that these still life’s and the objects that they represent will retain their charm and give truth to Emerson’s word, “If eyes were made for seeing then beauty is its own excuse for being.”"

Lisa is an oil painter and principle instructor at the Fort Point Studio School which she founded in 2005. For many years her work has focused on still life and portraiture with subject matter ranging from cups to old garments.