Lisa Grossman, Bandelier National Monument’s Artist in Residence in October. Courtesy/NPSBANDELIER News:
Bandelier National Monument is happy to introduce this month’s Artist in Residence, Lisa Grossman. In the two weeks she will be here, she is planning to work on a series of oil and watercolor landscapes. She wants to investigate progressions, such as the evolution of light and shadow across the land and archeological sites, and the effects of wind, weather, and dramatic forces of nature.
Grossman was born and raised in western Pennsylvania and moved to Kansas City in 1988 to work as an illustrator at Hallmark Cards. During her seven-year stint there, she discovered her true inspiration in the tallgrass prairies and river valleys of rastern Kansas. She has made a career of painting them for over 25 years now, focusing on oils, watercolors, and printmaking. She is now based in Lawrence, Kansas. Visit her web site: lisagrossmanart.com, and her Facebook page,”Lisa Grossman – artist”.
According to Grossman, “Without question, the best days of my life have been spent in America’s wild lands and parks and I can think of no higher purpose than to use my work to enhance understanding of and deepen visitor’s connections to these lands and resources.
As a “plein air” painter, my work explores shifts in weather and light, the sense of movement, and time passing. There’s a unique kind of discovery in the process of painting on location that embeds energy in the work in a way that can’t be duplicated in the studio. My paintings are how a place feels as much as how it looks.”
This is Grossman’s eighth time serving as an artist-in-residence in National Park lands since 2004. She’s worked in Rocky Mountain and Mesa Verde National Parks in Colorado, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, (twice), Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, Nebraska, and the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Kansas. She spent this past summer in Tracy Arm/Ford’s Terror Wilderness in the Tongass National Forest, Alaska, with the US Forest Service kayak rangers.