Self-taught artist with a childhood obsession with comic book girls. A woman painting women - using the female gaze to creating new archetypes.
Influences include Alphonse Mucha, Modesty Blaise comic books, Gustav Klimt, John Bauer and Elsa Beskow.
"Lisas work is post-feminist and very personal. It layers contemporary, personal images of proud female beauty on top of historical stereotypical female documents, juxtaposing them and also overpainting them. Gentle, beautiful vandalism."
/VINTAGE GIRLS
I made my very first Vintage Girl in April 2015. It was a commission that needed to be a certain size and my pages were perfect for it.
I explore themes like mental health, trauma and the female gaze. Mixed media collage on vintage magazine pages.
There is a lot of text in my art and I get to weave in some secrets and stories in the background. Most of my magazines come from old (1890s-1960s) women’s magazines. Some of them - like Idun - were considered feminist at the time but are hopelessly outdated by now. I mostly use short stories and they always have the same theme - how to fall in love and get married. It’s an interesting contrast to a more modern illustration style and woman.
It’s a summary of how I perceive myself as a woman in many ways - it’s the images and discourses I’ve been feed throughout my life; they are children’s book illustrations, pinups, IG models, 80s underwear catalogs and comic book girls.
“When i look at your work i see the female protaganist as being stuck between being an object (as a woman and the history of that) and a person with the full range of experiences and emotions. I don't know if i am right but i think it is very clever”
In contemporary usage, the female gaze is used to refer to the perspective of the female viewer which is different from a male view of the subject. You might see a pinup style woman but she is painted from a woman’s perspective with the intention to empower the female viewer.
“Do women paint themselves and one another differently? ‘Women artists look beyond the ideal beauty — the archetype’ Andrea Karnes declares. In doing so, they create a portfolio of new archetypes.”
