A WING Project Space solo exhibition by Lisa Hess Hesselgrave
December 21st, 2020 — January 25th, 2021
In From Life, a WING online project space exclusive exhibition, Equity Gallery showcases artist Lisa Hess Hesselgrave’s delicately sensual and dream-like figurative pastel and charcoal sketches, studies, and drawings.
“Mostly wooded and often dark, the places my figures inhabit are conjured from memory and imagination. Reflecting on the fairy tales of my childhood and mixing them with a dose of my current life in a semi-wooded area of Connecticut, I’ve re-imagined characters, situations, and places from a grown-up perspective.
Color, light, form and structure are essential components providing limitless challenges as well as a framework upon which I suspend images, both observed and remembered.
Several themes hold my interest: the atmospheric landscape / the figure as an abstraction of form and color / the narrative that occurs when the painted figure enters the painted place.
I continually explore new media and new ways of revealing the poetry and mystery in the familiar, visible world.”
About the Artist:
Lisa Hess Hesselgrave was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1958. She earned an MFA degree from the Yale University School of Art and a BFA degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her work has been included in shows throughout Connecticut and New York in many venues including the National Academy of Design and Tatistcheff Gallery, and The Painting Center. She has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center (2014), the Millay Colony for the Arts (1992, 2002), and the Seaside Institute, Florida (1996). She recently completed a three week residency in Tétouan, Morocco. Hesselgrave’s paintings and works on paper range in size, media, and subject. They focus mainly on figures, landscapes and the intersection of those two subjects. Although mostly representational the work is shaped by strong abstract qualities. In addition to her studio practice Hesselgrave has taught drawing, painting, color theory, and 2D design at several colleges, including the State University of New York, Purchase, the University of Connecticut, and Fairfield University. She currently teaches at Gateway Community College in New Haven. Hesselgrave lives with her family near the edge of the woods, just outside of New Haven. She continues to do work that experiments, evolves, and pushes boundaries, while maintaining a disciplined adherence to craft and a pursuit of personal content.