The Divine David Painting

Lisa Maria Ortiz produces paintings that put the viewer on intimate terms with her subjects, making work that deals with the documentation of events and questions and how these can be presented. Her subjects are given a stage to shout to the world that they want to be seen. People on the fringe of society that merge with the onlooker’s gaze. Her figures are sometimes disassociated from their original meaning through her method of painting in layers and leaving the initial drawing showing, making the whole process visible. Creating the sense of a lingering hidden world, Ortiz enjoys making works in which the actual event has still to take place or has just ended: moments built of atmosphere and suspense, focusing on how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and tells a story about the effects of social and sexual interaction. The images almost whisper ‘look at me’. Lisa Maria is interested in the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other: to feel, suffer and love ourselves and each other seems to be a constant battle of the mind and an intense dialogue involving mental health. This is what inspires her to paint. Lisa Maria lives and works in Greater London.