Lissa Banks

I was the youngest of four girls and I was the one who took up my dad’s offer to go with him to the nursery or help him in his workshop.

My childhood memories smell like bags of manure in the back of the station wagon and sawdust on the floor of the garage. My dad taught me how to deadhead spent flowers and how to use a drill and how to temper steel. He gifted me with a miter box one year and a box full of acrylic paints and brushes another year.

As an engineer he was a frustrated artist but one who could paint with plants and outfit a 27’ sailboat, sails and all. He filled our lives with beautiful things and those things have continued to be important to me as well, especially flowers.

And he gave me that box of paints.

From Yankee stock, my dad saved scraps of wood. There was a pile I could pilfer for whatever project I wanted. In middle school I used them to paint stylized characters of girls with long legs and flowers, always flowers.

When I paint flowers now it’s as if I am gathering them together on the canvas as a gift for someone. I try to summon those childhood memories to imbue all of their essences together: their smell, their velvet petals, their brilliant color (not so much the manure). I like to paint them powerf...

BA Drew University
Though I sought a degree in art history, the immersive arts program in which I was enrolled required a minor in fine art, thank goodness.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Group Shows:

Take 4, Zullo Gallery, Medfield, MA 2023

Member Invitational, Duxbury Art Association, Duxbury, MA, 2021

Character Development, Attleboro Arts Museum, Attleboro MA, 2020

8 Visions, Attleboro Arts Museum, Attleboro MA, 2019

Spring Awakening, Asa Waters Mansion, Millbury MA, 2019

Describing the Real, Hopkinton Center for the Arts, Hopkinton MA, 2016

Solo Shows:

Norfolk Cultural Council Artist Series 2018

Juried & Member Juried Shows:

Plymouth 55th Annual Juried Art Show, Plymouth Center for the Arts, Plymouth MA, 2022

Flights of Fancy, Gallery Twist, Lexington MA, 2022

Art by The Bay, Duxbury Art Association, Duxbury MA, 2022

Winter Juried Exhibition, Duxbury Art Association, Duxbury MA, 2019 thru 2023

Spring Open, Cape Cod Art Center, Barnstable MA, 2021-2023

Annual Open Arts Juried Exhibition, Amazing Things Art Center, Framingham, MA, 2019

You: Artists Depict Themselves, Hopkinton Center for the Arts, Hopkinton MA, 2019

Bay State Open, Cape Cod Art Center, Barnstable MA, 2018-2019

Creative Circles, Hopkinton Center for the Arts, Hopkinton MA, 2017

The National, Cape Cod Art Center, Barnstable MA, 2015 thru 2020, 2022

Arts in Bloom, Hopkinton Center for the Arts, Hopkinton MA, ...