William E. Robbins
Kenosha Life, Kenosha News
Thursday, February 22, 1990

Artist’s work “uncomfortable”

Lisa Englander insists that a work of art shouldn’t make one feel terribly uncomfortable.

“If it makes you feel so comfortable it lulls you into passivity, then it’s not succeeding,” she says. “Art needs to challenge people.”

Englander, 35, a Racine-based artist, will present a show of her paintings, drawings and books – which manage to offer both artistic challenge and comfort - at Gallery 124 beginning Saturday.

Most notable are vividly, hued, abstract watercolors that feature meticulously detailed patterns including checkerboards, lattices and stripes juxtaposed against fluid, floral shapes.

The intricate patterns are heavily layered – virtually collaged- and dynamically arranged to produce illusions of perspective and movement.

The jagged edges formed by the layered collision of geometric patterns contrast boldly with the white space of the canvas.

“My paintings are extremely dense,” confesses Englander, who is married to Bruce Pepich, Director of Racine’s Wustum Museum of Fine Arts. She has won many awards for her work, which is represented in numerous collections.

“I pack a lot into a small space,” she says. “I keep jamming in more and more.”

Indeed. It is a not unusual for her to spend 12 to 16 hours a day on a tiny section – a few square inches - of a painting. And it takes a full year to create two of the relatively large works (roughly 30 by 40 inches), which are done in complementing pairs.

Watercolor is not a medium that lends itself easily to profoundly minute detailing and brilliant coloration. But Englander, something of an obsessive technical magician, accomplishes both,

The image of a hand - held fan is a continuing aesthetic motif in her work, although less so these days, she says. The fan image can be found, if only upon close scrutiny in most of her paintings.

“A fan embodies a feminine shape. It has gentle curves, and very hard edges. It’s a beautiful form, it opens and closes, and seductively hides parts of the body.”

The technical dictates of her work are formidable, even for someone is skilled as Englander.

“I do a tremendous amount of mixing (colors),” she says. “I only have a few colors on my palette, but I’m forever combining them to make new ones.”

That invention is crucial, because she employs a multitude of shadings, from very dark to almost invisibly pale. And each subtle gradation requires a new mix of colors to achieve precisely the right tone.

In an artist’s statement, Englander says her paintings can be compared to jazz music: “visually organized in an almost musical fashion, when sections of color, pattern and designs meet, connect and stop abruptly, before changing to an entirely different portion of the piece like riffs in a jazz composition. 

Though her work is immensely pleasing to the eye – like peering into a kaleidoscope - Englander, deliberately incorporates elements that keep viewers on their aesthetic toes.

“People are always saying, “Why are the flowers upside down?” Yes, they’re all “down-growers. “ They face down and generate a feeling of propulsion, of falling. It prevents viewers from becoming totally comfortable. Challenges them. The flowers add an extra tension.”

Also, the paintings possess intriguing, and disorienting, illusions of movement and dimension.

“I’m very interested in perspective,” Englander says, “I like the feeling of pushing and pulling of space. Some of the works look like they’re imploding, some look like they’re exploding. Some draw you in, and others make you want to step back for broader view.”

Though her art is demanding, and time consuming, Englander doesn’t mind.

“It’s a labor of love. I’m lucky to be able to do something I like. I never complain. I really don’t. I’m a real happy person.”