If you have ever stood at the edge of the ocean and felt, for a moment, completely encompassed by something larger than yourself, you already understand Lisa Smith's paintings. That feeling has been the driving force of her life and the subject of her work, even when the canvas shows no water at all.  

 

She grew up in New England, and as a child she visited her aunt and uncle's cottage at Moody Beach, Maine. The cottage had character: exposed studs on the walls, a delightful collection of bizarre hats hanging on the wall, and a mantle lined with shells, sea glass, and rocks gathered on morning walks. A handmade sign on the bathroom door read “The Doctor Is In” on one side and “The Doctor Is Out” on the other. But it was the beach itself that left the deepest mark. It was vast in a way that felt personal, as if all that open water and sky existed just to remind a child how big the world was. She walked the shore in the mornings, out to the rocks to collect sea treasures. The sun was warm, the salt air fresh. You could walk the length of that beach to the next town and feel, the whole time, like you were exactly where you were supposed to be. And underneath everything, always, was the sound of the ocean, its ever-present music calling out to let her know it was there.

 

When she finally began painting in earnest, the sea was all she could paint. Not as a decorative subject but out of genuine compulsion. For nearly three years she returned to it again and again, driven by something she could not fully name until she was already inside it. She has since moved to the Connecticut coast, where she lives and works today, and where the light on the marsh still stops her in her tracks.

 

Her work spans abstract expressionism, abstract seascapes, and reverse glass painting. She describes herself as a surrogate: the work is birthed through her rather than made by her. Her abstract paintings are deeply physical in their making, rooted in breath and movement, painting from the heart. Before a session she often moves through gentle somatic exercises to release emotions and let the energy flow into the work. 

 

At its core, what Lisa paints is connection: the invisible thread between people who love each other across distance, the grief that lives quietly inside joy, the way a particular stretch of coastline can carry an entire lifetime of feeling. She believes there is a universal energy running through all living things, and that her work makes that energy visible. People who collect her paintings often describe a deep familiarity, as if the piece had been waiting for them.

 

Lisa holds a BA in Studio Arts from Trinity College, Hartford, CT, and studied Studio Art in Florence, Italy. She also holds an MA in Counseling from the University of Dayton and spent years teaching art in private, public, and boarding schools throughout New England before committing fully to her own practice. Her work is held in private collections across the United States and abroad, including in Tokyo, Manhattan, Boston, Nantucket, Greenwich, Los Angeles, and Jackson, Wyoming.​

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“I paint to remind us of what we already know at our core but sometimes forget —

that we are all part of the same magnificent, loving energy.”