Lisa Zwerling

I am a narrative representational painter. I was born and raised in New Jersey though I have lived in New York City for all of my adult life. I am committed to figurative work with ideas, and I always try for a memorable image. I was trained as a figure painter at Cooper Union. An interest in landscape came much later as I tried to make landscape as intense as any figure painting.

I usually paint in series: The Four Seasons, Fire, the Iraq war and predators, and Fountains. The current paintings of scenes from Mozart's opera The Magic Flute is my most extensive and concentrated series to date.

On the Saatchi site, I will leave work from the 2005 series about the Iraq war and from the 2009 series on fountains.

Since 1990 I combined figures and animals in landscapes. In 2005 I used images of war as potent narrative elements. I was haunted by the visuals of Iraq. In a poetic fiction I combined the wolves I'd painted for several years with Apache helicopters. As I painted my reaction to the war, I found that my symbolic metaphor was indeed a reality. I learned that in Alaska helicopters are used in aerial gunning of wolves. Though Apaches helicopters are not used, the image is close enough to conflate war and ruthless ex...

Sarah Lawrence College BA
Cooper Union BFA
New York University MA

SOLO SHOWS:
Frye Art Museum Seattle
First Street Gallery, New York, 14 shows 1976 - 2012

PARTIAL LIST OF GROUP EXHIBITIONS
First Street Gallery, New York, National Juried Exhibition, Juried by Jed Perl, 2014
First Street Gallery, NY, numerous group shows from 1975 - 2014
2 x 13 Gallery, New York, Three Person Group, 2006
First Street Gallery, New York, Four Person Group, '03
Broome Street Gallery, NY, Holiday Invitational, 2002
National Academy of Design, New York, 175th Annual Exhibition, 2000
Castle Gallery, College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY, The Waking Dream, 1998
Park Avenue Atrium, New York, Animal Attractions, '96
Babcock Galleries, New York, Peaceable Kingdom, '94
The Trenton City Museum, Trenton, New Jersey, 1993
Stelling, Fruits de la Passion, Leiden, Netherlands, '92
Witzenhausen Meijerink, Fruits de la Passion, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1992
Jill George Gallery, London, England, 1990
1 Penn Plaza, New York, Short Stories, Juried by Judd Tully, 1986
The Clocktower, New York, Costumes, Masks, & Disguises, 1986
Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, New York, 1985
Artists' Choice Museum, New York, The First Eight Years, 1984
Hudson Highlands Museum, Cornwall on Hudson, New York, Juried by Ivan Karp, 19...