Lisa Bormann started her career in Spain when she was seventeen and studied drawing at the School of Fine Arts in Malaga.  She spent her sophomore college year studying history and literature in Vienna, then graduated from Stanford University with a Phi Beta Kappa degree in history, where she won the James Birdsall Weter prize for distinguished honors thesis.

She then spent four years of full-time study 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 of hours of life drawing every day, study of human anatomy and memory drawing.  Painting emphasized the study of values, with students exploring their own predilections for impressionist color, landscape painting, etc.  Bormann followed these studies with trips to Europe to paint portrait commissions and landscapes.

Before the birth of her first son, Lisa taught drawing and painting for several years in two studio schools – Atelier LeSeuer and the Minnesota River School.  She is married, with two boys, and paints every day in a large studio in the second floor of their home in the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis.  Her studio work centers on the figure – nudes, interiors, and portraits – and she works in a range of techniques from direct painting to indirect methods incorporating underpainting and glazing.  Landscapes are done on site with the impressionist’s goal of truth in color and value.  The core of this work is the direct expression of a sensibility confronting nature – the sitter in the studio posing multiple times for a portrait, the snow scene on site, always at the same time and conditions, sometimes over multiple years if necessary.

Bormann and her family enjoy 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. Many examples of her work are shown here and in Minneapolis Galleries and you can contact her if you are interested in seeing more.

                        ©2005 Lisa Bormann