Middletown Artist: Mind Meets Medium

Anyone who has ever hung their own art show knows how labor intensive and challenging it can be.

One recent Wednesday, Middletown resident Lisa Davidson was at the Monmouth Beach Cultural Center preparing for her upcoming show by hanging 41 of her abstract paintings for a solo exhibition that will run through Aug. 7. She was there for about six hours, but it probably would have taken longer if it wasn’t for the help of an old friend, Gail Ellison, who lives in Oceanport. 

"We grew up together and were best friends in middle and high school," Davidson said. "We lost touch and I hadn't seen her in 30 years. We ran into each other at Zebu's in Red Bank in November. The friendship has blossomed again."

Davidson said she gave a lot of thought to how she was going to hang the paintings. She decided on a chronological order because she felt there was a clear progression in her work over the last 20 or so years.

"I have progressed from geometric abstractions through to a loser style using many different stencils, some that I make myself and others that I purchase," she said.

She explained that she paints the underlying abstract first and then she layers other elements over the basic painting. Sometimes she pours paint, other times she drips, or uses tape, but there are always the stencils.

Most of her paintings have one overarching color theme, like red, or blue or purple, but then she adds complimentary colors over the top like a second layer. She also uses white and black to create movement. 

"I love abstract expressionism, but I wanted to do it in a new way," Davidson said. "Ever since art school, I have loved black. When I was in college at the School of Visual Art (in NYC,) and my teacher commented  that whenever I use black, I get lost in the work, I knew black would appear in my paintings. Black lines help me because they gave my paintings structure."

As a result, most of her earlier, more geometric works, have black lines that create a frame around the colorful passages inside. Eventually, she eliminated the black lines and began to create layers with stencils and modeling paste to create texture. At one point, she decided to combine the two elements in her work and began to use both stencils and thick black forms.

Like most abstract artists, her work progresses intuitively. She never draws out her design and rarely knows where she is going to wind up. "I have a vague idea what I want to do and may do a number of works using the same stencils in different ways with different colors," Davidson said. "I go where the painting takes me."

As an example, she pointed out a series of four paintings with a skull theme. She created a stencil skull shape and used it on each painting. Sometimes it appears as a negative image and sometimes it is more apparent. She repeats the skulls a number of times creating a pattern that is just one layer of the painting. She also stenciled flowers and bursts of color to create energy.

"The skull shape intrigued me at one point," she said. "I think that the shape of the skull is so beautiful. When we are just a skull, we are all on an even plane."

Davidson also loves texture, so lately she has been gluing items onto her canvas to create texture, things like gauze, sand and modeling paste. "I put things on the canvas and then scrape them off until I get the desired effect," she said. "I like to have a base from which to go wild."

Lately she has been using circles and basic forms as the base. "Sometimes the drips are in front of the form and sometimes behind," the artist noted. "By doing that, I can create a lot of push and pull."

Push and pull is one of the tenets of abstract painting. It simply means that some section recede and some seem to come forward or as Davidson put it, it creates positive and negative space.

Davidson has lived in Middletown since 1999. She and her husband, Dennis, moved here from Hoboken because they thought it would be a good town to their two raise children, Owen, 11, and Ryan, 13. She calls them her masterpieces.

The artist said she can’t remember a time when she wasn’t painting or drawing, but she said, she really doesn’t like to draw, so abstraction suits her.

She has a studio at home, but also spends a few hours a week painting at Grace Graupe Pillard’s workshop in the Barn at Thompson Park, something she has been doing since 2007. "I get in a good, solid couple of hours there and then I paint at home," Davidson said. "The experience of working with Grace has been invaluable. She has a great eye and really helped me see my work in a new way."

Davidson works exclusively with acrylics because she finds them so versatile: "I can layer, thin it out with water, use it thick and create texture."

She said that one of her teachers at the School of Visual Art, Mary Heilman, was a big influence on her work. "She influenced me more than I realized," Davidson said. "She had such a freedom in her work. I keep trying to achieve that. She had a retrospective show at the New Museum, (NYC) a couple of years ago and when I saw her work, I realized how good she really was."

She also admires the work of more famous artists like Kandinsky, Matisse and DeKoning.

Davidson has a bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and a master's of science degree from the College of New Rochelle, NY. Her specialty is working with adults with psychiatric illness.

As with helping them balance their lives, "my art work is about balance and color," she said. "Also, the tension between chaos within form.  I use acrylics because I appreciate the textures I achieve with them.  My work can be called geometric abstractions, but my favorite painters have always been the abstract expressionists. My goal is to bring this expressionism into the 21^st century."

The building that houses the Monmouth Beach Cultural Center is an historic US Life-Saving Station The Center on Ocean Avenue is open every Wednesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.