Lisa Ervin: The Freedom of Making Art for Oneself

Some artist studios are pristine and well-appointed. Some verge on total chaos. Some feel like a Bohemian crash pad; others have a strong utilitarian vibe. Some convert a garage into a studio, others paint in a bathroom or kitchen. Plein air painters paint outdoors.

Lisa Ervin paints in the middle of her family.

Ervin shares her creative space with her two young sons.

Ervin, who works as a clothes designer during the day, paints whenever she can in her home's "maker space." There's a small cart loaded with liquid acrylic paints. There's plenty of LEGOs in bins along two walls. Natural light floods the room. It may be too much for some artists to work right next to grade-school age children, but the effect of Lisa Ervin's studio is one of creativity, first and foremost. Her two sons seem as intent on creating as Ervin.

The artist grew up in a farm town in Wisconsin, earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin, studied at Parson's School of Design in New York City, designed products and

marketing material for major retailers such as Victoria's Secret Pink and the Gap, and along the way, started painting less. That started to change during her tenure in New York when she made a point to squeeze out time to paint for herself, and blossomed further when she and her family moved to the Kansas City area in the Fall of 2020.

She is working with forms and colors in both her day job and her burgeoning fine art career, resulting in a symbiotic relationship between the two endeavors. Ervin's design background helps make her skilled in using color. "It can just flow," she says. Her work experience helps her fine art in other ways. "My paintings are better for doing design, even when I haven't painted for a while." Her fine art painting boosts her design work, if only for the outlet is allows.

Craft brushes, ordinary pencils, and liquid acrylic paint is all Ervin needs to create her compelling art.

"When you work in design, doing what your clients say to do, you really appreciate the freedom you get from making your own art," says Ervin. "In many ways, paintings are the opposite of design work."

Her fine art certainly is more personal. In one series, she explored the experience of modern women and mothers. Another series of flower bouquets gave Ervin a chance to explore a compressed value range and an elegant, somewhat limited color palette. Her depictions of bison and cowgirls roots her work in the Midwest and Upper Midwest. And the materials she uses tethers her work closely to her own life.

When Ervin was looking through her mother's things, she discovered boxes of mementos and many packets of patterns for sewing homemade clothes. This resonated with her because of her background as a clothes designer. On they went, onto the canvases. Her adhesive? Good old Elmer's glue, the same glue her sons were using for their creations. The

Cowgirls and LEGOs and creativity rule the "makers space"

thin pattern paper wrinkles and buckles when the glue hits it, but Ervin doesn't mind. "I like layers to a work--literally and figuratively," she says. "The more you build up the surface, the more character it gets. It gives the piece more of a history." In other words, the wrinkles are a feature, not a bug. She works on prestretched canvases, with extra blank canvases and a few finished canvases stored in her basement. The artist uses craft paint straight out of the bottle.

Ervin is not precious about her materials. Elmer's glue works just fine for her.

The layers of paint and adhered paper--of various kinds--create a complex image. Counterbalancing this is Ervin's affinity for a vignette look. Her subject matter may have soft edges, dissolving the form into the background of the piece. This urges the viewer to contemplate what the artist is saying about the relative importance of the various elements in the painting. Don't concentrate on the "lost" feet of the stately bison depicted; look instead for what Ervin is emphasizing in the piece.

Often, painters must face the question of how much is too much--when does a piece say enough? With Ervin building layers that make the very surface an important feature in itself, the question becomes even more pointed. Her response? "I can show you some paintings where the previous versions of it may have worked better" than the end result. "I have to force myself to stop." That's perhaps a difficult task when one works in the "makers space" that is Lisa Ervin's home studio. The inspiration is palpable in that colorful, bright room. •

View Lisa Ervin's work, along with the photographs of Tom Arnhold, now through March 7 at Prairie Village's City Hall, on Mission Road.

"Transformation," by Lisa Ervin, mixed media on canvas, 20 x 16 in.

"The Grazer" and "The Plainswalker," both are mixed media on canvas, 36 x 36 in.

"Winstead's, Roe Avenue," by Lisa Ervin, mixed media on canvas, 24 x 36 in.

"Modern Mother," by Lisa Ervin, mixed media on canvas, 20 x 16 in.

"The Great One," by Lisa Ervin, mixed media on canvas, 22 x 44 in.