Featured Artist: Lisa Marie Thalhammer
What would the world look like if women were the creators of their own image in popular culture and beyond? If women were more than sensual pleasures or nurturing mothers, for the gaze, and sometimes touch, of onlookers desperate for an escape from the mystery of misery and suffering on planet earth. At its core, this is what the work of Lisa Marie Thalhammer asks. By using the ancient tools of visual pleasure and attraction, Lisa Marie lures viewers into her paintings and mixed media works of women through vibrant color, the female body, beauty and magnetic proportions/composition. However, upon closer look, the eyes (throughout history known as the window to the soul) of her subjects, return the gaze of the viewer and demand respect, not only as a woman, but as a human being.
(Above: Boxer, 2006 and A Portrait of Stacy with a Gun, 2005)
Lisa Marie’s three latest series of work each address under-represented aspects of female identity in contemporary culture. In particular, her Boxer series and Guns and Girls series (above), address the coexistence of feminine beauty and an empowered spirit at the core of a fully realized woman. They both also force viewers to contemplate the idea that violence is a problem of the human psyche and soul, not just a masculine tendency. In Lisa Marie’s words, her latest series of work, Lot Lizards (below), “tells the story of an American highway underbelly by drawing on my young experiences working within the male dominated subculture of my family’s Middle American truck stop.” Lot Lizards (a slang term for truck stop prostitutes), in the work of Lisa Marie, are tools to explore the transcendence of the traditional female dichotomy of virgin/whore. Her use of Byzantine patterns and illuminated designs from gospel manuscripts envelop her hand drawn semi-trucks while her Lot Lizards are restored to a wholeness through Lisa Marie’s interlaced referencing of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, female figures from Catholic mythology. (view more work)
(Above: Lot Lizard BP STLE, 2007 and Lisa Marie)
