Lisa Derrick

Contemporary landscape artist, Lisa Derrick, grew up in a small village in West Sussex, England, where her love of being outdoors began. In 1994 Lisa graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art. She successfully sold 3 pieces from her degree show to private collectors in London. After studying, Lisa’s career took a slight detour to become a teacher, and it wasn’t until she moved to Scotland in 2007 that her art once again became a priority.

Lisa’s work is continually inspired by the Scottish landscape and her paintings can be a mix of representational and abstracted forms, sometimes creating a mere suggestion of a landscape through lines, shapes and patterns.

In the most recent years Lisa has changed from working with her usual medium of oil and cold wax to now painting with acrylic. Her process has also become more intuitive, responding to marks left by different tools and gestures as well as by imprinting textured objects or stencils into the paint. Lisa’s serene landscapes, are layers of intricate marks and unusual patterns that entice you to look more closely and take a moment to pause in our fast-paced world.

My art is intrinsically linked to being amongst nature, inspired not only by what I see but also by how I feel. My paintings are my response to the positive impact that nature has on me.

I notice patterns of tree branches, shapes of a puddle in a flooded field, things that many may see as banal parts of the landscape. I then take this same approach when making my art. Rather than portraying a scene, I apply the paint intuitively, noticing and responding to which colours and marks sing to me. I delight in the patterns left by imprinting a variety of objects and stencils into the wet paint. These paintings may still be interpreted as landscapes due to some recognizable shapes that anchor the viewer to a particular place, but ultimately, I am enjoying the process of making the paintings, without knowing what the ultimate outcome will look like.

All of what I choose to create is an expression of my own truth of what moves me but, in turn, I want to lead the viewer to draw beauty from it for one’s self and be left with a feeling of ease and a deep sense of joy.