Lisa Noble
Alexandria, Virginia
Website
www.lisanoble.com
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your work?
I consider my work to be self-portraiture. Through paint, drawing and photographs, I mainly address the female figure centralized within a composition and presented in a state of aloneness or isolation (not to be mistaken for loneliness). I do this because it appeals to me and reveals much about my sense of identity. It also taps into the emotional aspects of my personal history in ways that I find manageable.
There’s an insistent flatness and stiffness in my work that causes planes to bend and bow in odd ways. Range is important to me, so my style will shift from one body of work to the next. I don’t want to build my legacy by making the same thing over and over again. My long-term goal is to show the common thread that runs between each piece no matter what it looks like. I think this is an important point because digital proliferation has exposed a vast sameness in art making.
I like the topic of beauty but I approach it in a reductive way. Meaning, I rely upon the absence of a line or detail to be more important than the truths about beauty. The results are often surreal. Color is very important to me but I will readily abandon it for the richness in black and white values—as shown in the Gowns Series that I’ve included for this feature. The gendered properties of fashion and patterning are also of interest to me but my work is not about appearances or cliché notions of femininity, although that may seem to be the case on the surface.
What inspires you?
Inspiration implies that there is a distinct moment when I feel the creative spark, but for me this has never been the case. My art has always been there for me in my life, on the worst of days and best of days. It is my companion and a place I go to when I need to work things out. In order to gain momentum in the studio, I must force myself to get to work. Once I am warmed up, my focus dials into what I’m doing and time is suspended. That mode of tunnel vision is when I can tune everything out and I begin to break ground.
Painting is a series of decisions, one informed by the next. It is a kind of mental jumping that can become very addictive and by the time I need to put my brushes down, I have a hard time convincing myself to stop. In many ways, being in the studio is akin to working out at the gym. It’s tough at first, but then the endorphins kick in and away I go. The long-term benefit of regular investments in my studio provides me with energy to keep at it.
Can you speak about your process?
I work best when I can latch onto a subject or idea and expand upon it. I tend to think in series or a singular body of work and how the pieces are going to be related. With each series, I like to experiment by changing my style or approach to my subject because it forces me to stretch and usually, I need to pick up a new skill along the way. I am a big believer in lifelong learning so that last part excites me.
I have developed a set of tenets by which I bring form to my ideas which are otherwise just feelings up until that point. My rules focus on the importance of line, the gendered properties of pattern and decoration, and the absence of information to more fully leverage the funded experience, to name a few. More and more I find that I want my work to be transitional, falling somewhere between realism and abstraction.
How did you become interested in art?
I think most of us can say we were busy kids, enjoying scribbling and so forth. That was me for sure, but my first real idea of “art”, meaning art in practice, came to me when my Kindergarten class took a field trip to the Winnipeg Art Gallery. We sat on the floor while the docent talked to us about the exhibition that was all around us. I remember there were large sculptures of domestic objects (such as a kettle and record player) and there were paintings too. In particular, the docent spoke about the black and white linear canvases next to where she stood. She asked if we could see the lines moving, and then… what did we see? She was calling our attention to the optical illusions created by British artist Brigette Riley’s dizzying Op Art paintings. Watching these artworks literally transform in front of me—specifically, I saw neon fishies swimming in and out of swaying seaweed—excited me and showed me that art has the innate power to dissolve the veneer of the everyday. My parents had been arguing so much in my home life, that I walked around with a sadness in my heart all of the time. Of course, I was too young to know what was happening to me, but at that moment art jolted me right out of my pain. It was an instant shot of relief and it gave me something special that I will forever hang onto.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books or quotes?
One of my most favorite quotes of all time is by one of my favorite painters of all time, Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954). In his 1908 essay “Notes of a Painter” Matisse writes, “I feel very strongly the tie between my earlier and my recent works, but I do not think exactly the way I thought yesterday. Or rather, my basic idea has not changed, but my thought has evolved, and my modes of expression have followed my thoughts. I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there is not one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.”
What advice do you have for younger artists?
It is best and easiest to be yourself. Life is short, so start today. Explore. Climb a dangerous mountain if you must, but do it as you and not in character. Experience things in person and be fearless about it, as much as you can. Look at art history and antiquity across cultures and time. Know whose shoes you are trying to fill to avoid creating in a vacuum which will most certainly result in a blind repetition of what someone else has already done. Don’t waste your time or your art supplies being an infant or imposter in your own career. Get used to hearing “no” but never stop believing in your art because if you don’t believe in it, I guarantee no one else ever will.
Any more thoughts about art, creativity, or anything else you would like to share?
The longer I am alive, the more I see that this journey as “an artist” isn’t a choice. Creativity is a series of genetic threads inherently woven into my habits, interests, abilities and shortcomings. Counter to the familiar definition of a messy creative mind, I am not incessantly painting or drawing or photographing, but I am constantly thinking about what I see. The engine is always revving, even when I’m sleeping. It’s a mental noise that reaches very high levels at times. It has always been this way for me. I’m only now starting to understand it. I am excited for the future.
