Folk Posy by Lisa Firke

Folk Modern art

What do you call that style?

When I was a young artist, I yearned for a style.I know now it can take years for an artist to recognize her own hand, which was always there but difficult to recognize at first. What I came to understand primarily is that I enjoy contrasts and juxtapositions in the art I make:

Rustic + Refined or Naive + Sophisticated or Folk + Modern

Folk — because the folk hand has always been a natural one, none too perfect, with a tendency towards whimsical decoration. Mid-century Scandinavian design comes to mind.And Modern — inherited by anyone born in the 20th century, particularly this child of an architect — modern worships an abundance of white space, simplication of complex forms, along with a playful geometry.The real fun is dancing between the two, folk and modern, modern and folk.

Summer Reading, original painting by Lisa Firke, depicting animals and a young girl, reading under and on the branches of a stylized ash tree.

On Black

Why start with black? is the evergreen FAQ.One answer is that my artist brain seems to thrive when challenged to work off a dark substrate, in reverse of the usual light-to-dark procedure. Black gessoed panels beg to be brought into the light.Then, too, against a uniform background I can easily correct or refine my edges and dark fields are more forgiving than light ones. The shallow depth-of-field allows me to concentrate on the intricacies of the foreground.But there is more. Black is the darling, not-so-secret weapon of fashion designers and decorators for good reason. Placing even one black object in a room lends it weight and keeps the whole from being blandly insipid.Black as a color is powerful and dramatic, but also oddly restful and grounding.As I tell my collectors, Think of my works as a little black dress for your walls.

Paintings on Black by Lisa Firke

Originals in private collections.

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