How did showing in the exhibition impact your career as an artist?
“Exhibiting in the Betsey Meyer Memorial Exhibits was a part of my return to showing my work seriously after a limited hiatus following the births my children, and helping my aging mother move into assisted living. Main Line Art Center provided me with a professional setting and a large audience who both see artwork and appreciate it and launched me into my continuous run of shows.
I remember speaking with a couple, the evening of one of the three shows my work was in, who made comments, that thrilled me, as they described their feelings about my work. Their perceptions reflected the very concept the work portrayed. To have communicative and supportive viewers is ideal for an artist. Main Line Art Center’s participants do that and more.
Circumstances changed, and I was no longer showing on the Main Line, which was a loss to me and my work. I have donated my artwork to some fundraisers to support the Art Center and am delighted to have been invited back to show in this particularly exciting opportunity. Twenty years of the Betsey Meyer Memorial juried show, and hosting this Retrospective is a remarkable achievement for MLAC, and a joy for me and for art lovers. Many thanks to the hard work of so many people to keep Main Line Art Center a regional powerhouse.”
Artist Statement
I paint, print, build, write and make books.
You will see differing forms of expression when you look at my portfolio, because I use the medium, which fits the requirements of the expression of that particular piece.
I feel, is likely to be one of the most important phrases to describe my work. What I feel, coupled with what I think, and know, determine my choices and interactions with process.
Process, interaction between artist and creation; where thought, skill, and intuition, guide the hand to form an object which elicits feeling in the viewer. The viewer may or may not feel what I personally have expressed, but the fact that the viewer feels, is the point. In a world of reaction, rapidly transitory emotion and thought, I ask the viewer to pause, feel, and think, and return, again and again; to use art as benchmark of one’s own personal feeling and change, intellect and growth.
Artist Biography
Penelope Tsaltas Lisk grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and has made artworks her entire life. An Art Major in high school, she went on to study at Bryn Mawr College, where after focusing on Chemistry and History of Art, she fully committed to a Fine Art Major with a concentration in Printmaking. Locally, she also studied Painting at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, and Drawing and Printmaking at The Tyler School of Art.
Lisk earned her MFA in Printmaking at The Cranbrook Academy of Art, which offered intensive, mentor-based training. This mature approach to nurturing an artist, allowed her to form a life-long practice of intellectual pursuits and personal growth, which has been the foundation for her artistic expression.
Much of Lisk’s work centers around the hardships, joys, and bolstering of the human experience through expression of shared thoughts and feelings to lessen sensations of isolation in our culture.
Ms. Lisk has two grown children and maintains a studio in Media, PA.