Lisa Curry has two thrusts to her art that would seem to be diametrically opposed.
On one hand, she is an exacting realist.
“I try to make it look just like nature,” the life-long Brookfield resident said. “It has to be exact. If I see a picture, my painting has to look like it.”
On the other hand, she’s a stylist.
Lisa Curry
“I want people someday to look at my pictures and say, ‘Lisa did that,’” she said.
Both of these thrusts get to what Curry sees as the challenge of being an artist: “Me deciding the painting is done,” she said.
“It takes me a while to decide. I keep trying and trying to make it close and close and close to the real thing.”
Curry painted out of high school, but got sidetracked by marriage, kids and building a business, Do-Cut Sales and Service, which sells outdoor power equipment at stores in Warren and Boardman, with her husband, Jay.
About four years ago, she picked up a brush again.
“The kids have gotten old enough, now, and I just started thinking about me a little bit and doing what I like,” she said.
What she likes to do is paint animals.
“I have quite a few friends who are wildlife photographers, and I have permission to paint their scenery and their animals,” she said. “I’ve always liked animals, horses and dogs. I want somebody to look at my pictures and know that’s a deer and know it looks just right.”
She has found that painting helps her work through what is going on in her life.
“I get so calm and relaxed and happy inside.”
Curry sells original pieces but also creates prints, magnets, notepads and coasters, which she sells at Lanternman’s Mill in Mill Creek Park, Youngstown; and at the gift shops of the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, and the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, New Castle. Her newest outlet is the Random Acts of Artists Gallery in Cravings, Sharon, and she participated in the RAA gallery’s opening May 5. RAA has played a role in the local art community becoming “a big family,” she said.
“It’s a fun group,” Curry said of RAA. “It’s wonderful to talk to other artists. They are so encouraging. You see what they are doing. It brings out the artistic side of you when you get out amongst other artists.”
