Lisa McShane Art

Downdraft over the Lake. ©2013 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 24" x 24". This past year I've been looking up - literally. I've been working on a series of paintings of storms. I'm keenly interested in the way clouds and extreme weather impact the light and color of our world. This painting will be in my upcoming show at the Lucia Douglas Gallery in Bellingham. It opens late January and I'm nearly ready!

Val d'Orcia Storm. Oil on Linen Panel. 24" x 24". This spring I met my daughter in Italy for a couple of weeks. It was stormy and beautiful. I thought it was a perfect time of year to be there and watch the skies, drink wine and eat robust, winter foods. I don't normally paint images of my travels as I like to paint places I know well and that seem to be part of me. But I was already focused on painting storms and this is just one more.

Towards Bow. ©2013 Lisa McShane. Oil on Canvas. 30"x30". Winter in the northwest. This is the view to the west in Skagit. I don't know why, but the sky under the clouds is often yellow (when we can catch a glimpse.)

Selah Canyon 1. ©2013 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 16x20". This is one of my favorite places in eastern Washington. It's a deeply carved canyon with a small, mostly dry creek at the bottom. Selah Creek. It originates in the Yakima Firing Range and heads west to join the Yakima River. Eventually those waters flow to the Columbia and the Pacific Ocean.

Toward the Islands. ©2013 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 22x30" There's a beach not far from my house that's extremely contaminated. It's fenced off so that people don't walk their dogs but there's a small area where you can sit on logs and look out. I like to walk down there and look at the water. Towards sunset a small and varied army of watchers gathers to see what the sky and water will do. This is a painting I started nearly a year ago and struggled to finish. Most recently, the water didn't convey what I wanted. Yesterday I rode a ferry out to a nearby island and watched the water carefully, telling a friend what I was seeing. This morning I was able to complete the painting.

Study for Railroad Cars. Graphite on paper. 2013. For more than a decade I worked in environmental policy and politics. I haven't mixed that work into my paintings. No reason, it's just that I've painted the landscapes that I love and that's not the direction I've gone. However, that's changing. This summer the Whatcom Museum is hosting an exhibit called Nature in the Balance: Artists Interpreting Climate Change.   I'll be submitting one painting and I've given it a lot of thought. For a landscape painter the changes we see - including strange and epic storms - are worth thinking about and capturing. Peabody Coal and SSA Marine want to build North America's largest coal export terminal in my county, at an aquatic reserve. They intend to turn a high bluff above the Pacific - beautiful land that is a burial site for the Lummi Nation - into an 80-acre coal dump site. I oppose the project for many reasons but it's been on my mind. A lot.