By Valetta
Lisa Bartolozzi completes one painting a year, painstakingly applying layers of oil paint to her large canvases. In between she produces volumes of sketches on paper and small encaustic prints.
While the masters of the Renaissance painted royalty or wealthy merchants or higher-ups in the church, Lisa finds inspiration in the common man and woman. Her models who pose nude are sometimes homeless, are often elderly and once in a while very pregnant. In her Newark, DE studio, when her easel is winched out of the floor, you may occasionally find a commissioned portrait in progress. Although she is painstakingly serious about these paintings, she laughingly refers to them as "guys with ties."