Fri 11/18 @ 5-9PM
Many Clevelanders have followed the career of Cleveland Institute of Art-educated painter Lissa Bockrath and snapped up her work over the years, first at her gallery in Little Italy from 1995-2005 and more recently from her shows at the Kenneth Paul Lesko Gallery in the 78th Street Studios.
Her movement-filled abstract work suggests natural forces at work: wind and water colliding in often violent and forceful spasms but sometimes in elegiac and peaceful ways, when the elements seem to ease up and their movements become graceful, event balletic.
She says of her work, “I continually reflect on the inherent beauty of natural phenomena as well as their potentially destructive powers, and how the two seem to coexist in varying degrees of chaos. As in life, my paintings mix dark and foreboding elements with brilliance and light which symbolize hope, positivity, rebirth and all that is good.”
“In particular, I think about the fragility of human existence such as the ways catastrophic events like earthquakes or tsunamis can radically alter the lives of millions in an instant,” she continues. “At the same time, we have the human component of environmental change, how our own actions impact the world in which we live.”
See how she’s developed her application of these ideas in her new solo show, Soaring Beyond the Divide, which opens at the Kenneth Paul Lesko Gallery during this month’s Third Friday and will remain on view through 1/14/17.
Cleveland, OH 44102