Lisa DiFranza

My career as a collaborative artist – a theater director, educator and curator - took an unexpected pivot during Covid, when I began creating and posting daily sketches and paintings as a way to process the strangeness and isolation of the pandemic, and connect during the lockdown. I grew up in a family of painters, and have always enjoyed sketching and painting as an avocation. It wasn’t until 2020 that I realized that painting is my native language. My first solo show in March of 2021, at MARA Gallery in Sarasota, Florida, featured 365 paintings I created daily during the first year of the pandemic, made in my kitchen “studio” with gouache paints on paper. Since then, I have rented a studio, started painting larger works on canvas, and developed a robust painting practice. My paintings are fueled by joy and curiosity. I’m fascinated by shapes and colors, relationships, seeing everyday things in new ways, and the chaotic, unsteady shape the world is in. What will life look like as we continue to emerge from Covid? In the last year, humans have begun to populate my paintings, as if re-joining the world. We are face to face with each other again, and the pandemic has propelled us to reimagine our lives and the future. Where do we belong? What are we waiting for? How do we reconnect? Are we finding our way back to the familiar or blazing new pathways? What happens next?