Lisa Libby is a portrait artist whose work focuses on communicating her own emotions through the faces she paints. A curious artist who finds inspiration through emotional connection to the faces of the people in her life, strangers, historical figures, and characters portrayed in movies and television. She pulls the true emotion from the faces of the subjects and often exaggerated their expression.

Lisa’s process of painting begins working with complementary dark color and light color to lay down a quick outline of the subject. She uses either a palette knife or paint brush. Her first focus when beginning new work is to lay down the light and shadow for the base. She will then add various neutral colors, lastly layering with bolder and brighter colors. She paints fast for the first layer and then slows down when fine tuning the details. Most of her artwork is finished in 3-5 sessions, taking sometimes 1-week to a month to complete. She likes to allow her work to breath and sometimes leaves it on the easel to observe and tweak if needed. She enjoys taking several photos of unfinished work in various lighting and angles to observe how the portrait feels. The last step of her work is to sign her name in cursive at the bottom left corner of each canvas.

Born in the small town of Rochester, New Hampshire. She grew up across the State border in even smaller town called Lebanon, Maine. Her childhood home was a two-room cozy home built by her uncle on the same property as the aunt and uncle. Her family had many financial struggles but with imagination, Lisa could travel anywhere and create her own magic for free. She found create ways to spend her long summers exploring the short neighborhood street with her younger brother. Her childhood adventures with her brother were fishing, riding bikes and visiting the farm animals in the neighborhood and her uncles' ponies. During the dark cold winters in New England, she spent her days inside coloring and drawing.

With her Art teacher's encouragement, Lisa discovered her love for drawing her senior year of high school. After graduating high school, she moved to Boston, MA to attend College, majoring in Fashion Design. Her continued interest for Fashion Design took her to Miami, FL, where she took additional fashion courses classes that included more advanced fashion illustration courses. After a year of studying in Miami, she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where she married and had a daughter.

In 2010, she experimented with acrylic painting. With no formal fine art training her late Friend Diane Delaney, also a portrait artist, took her under her wing and became her mentor. Diane taught her all she knew about the art and frequented the Museum’s around Boston. They frequented the Boston Museum of Fine Arts taking advantage of the free figure drawing classes.

To date, Lisa is a disciplined artist, who paints everyday first thing each morning. She is currently experimenting with various mediums and techniques. With admiration for all artistic styles and eras she connects most with abstract portraits through expressionism.