Winner in American Artist's Golden Anniversary National competition in figure painting, Lisa Bormann started studying drawing at the School of Fine Arts in Malaga, Spain, when she was seventeen. She spent her sophomore college year studying history and literature in Vienna, then graduated from Stanford University, where she won the James Birdsall Weter prize for distinguished history honors thesis.

Lisa Bormann spent four years at Atelier Lack, a studio school teaching the fundamentals of drawing and painting from life. This program descended directly from the system of teaching brought to Boston by American Impressionists such as Tarbell, Paxton, and Chase, after their study in Europe during the late nineteenth century. Drawing was based on three hours of life drawing every day, study of human anatomy and memory drawing. Painting emphasized the study of values and impressionist color. Bormann explored her own interest in placing the figure in contemporary interiors and portraiture and followed these studies with trips to Europe to paint portrait commissions and landscapes.

Bormann enjoys annual trips for prolonged stays in northern and southern Minnesota. A summer month on the north shore of Lake Superior and fall in the great valley of the Mississippi at Lake Pepin provide the time and familiarity needed for the serious pursuit of landscape painting.