Lisa Carter Grist is an artist living and working in north Wales. She is primarily concerned with the way in which figuration and abstraction work together and she freely blends the real and the imagined. Her work is informed by nature’s processes and the intricacies of her immediate environment and lifelong collected references. Dualities merge, interior and exterior, abstraction and representation, painting and drawing, gesture and restraint, portrait and landscape. Her approach is intuitive and is like life, unplanned and unpredictable.
‘The world seen and felt, gestures, colours and marks reach out to meet literary and visual references and my own lived experience and imagination. The uncertainty of this process inspires me, it is an in-between space that I am compelled to explore a world where everything is connected and communicates freely with everything else.’
Lisa Carter Grist holds a BA (Theatre Design) from Central Saint Martin’s (1994). Her paintings have been selected for the Beep Painting Biennale (2020) and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2019 and 2015) and the National Eisteddfod of Wales, 2019, 2013 and 2009. She has exhibited at Somerset House, Utopia, 2016, MOSTYN, Mail Art 2019 and received two Arts Council of Wales awards, (2012, 2011).
Recent group exhibitions include: Wish You Were Here, Terrace Gallery, (group show curated by Jon Purday) London, 2022, Works on Paper and Small Paintings, Oriel Davies, 2022, Hastings Contemporary, A Generous Space, 2021, (group show curated by Matthew Burrows MBE), Terrace Gallery, London, Flirting With The Border Guards, (group show curated by Jonathan Ridge).
Recent solo presentations include: Oriel Ffin Y Parc, 2023, 2021 and Booklungs, Scenes and Sketches Safle Celf, Caernarfon, 2021
A solo exhibition by Lisa is now on Plas Glyn-y-Weddw until December 24th. Read about the exhibition below.
'Wayfinder'
October 15 - December 24, 2023
“This presentation features watercolours and works on paper which were painted outdoors in my local landscape, Llannefydd. They are shown with a small number of selected works painted in my studio in Denbigh. All works selected evoke figures or forms shifting through thresholds and dynamic processes in nature, settings where movement or an action is imminent. These themes mirror the unpredictability of my painting process and of life itself.
I deliberately place myself in a responsive but uncertain position when painting, selecting colours and materials impulsively whilst switching orientation of the works and working on several at the same time. This allows for my compositions to arrive from somewhere unknown. It is the paintings themselves that direct, inspire, frustrate and ultimately surprise with their suggestions.
Taking both unplanned and designed paths I encounter moments of interest and surprise, things half- sensed, seen out of the corner of my eye, the imprint of an animal on the ground, the negative space between a building and tree. My connection to nature and my absorption in the landscape provides a balance to my inner preoccupations and helps to create a certain distance between myself and the paintings. I want my paintings to reflect the spontaneity and freedom I encounter during my wayfinding but ultimately each painting has a character of its own.”