about

Lisa Bonilla Panter, originally from the Los Angeles area, is an award winning multi-media artist currently living in the Denver area. She has been involved in various arts and crafts workshops over the years, but is primarily self-taught. She also worked professionally as a production artist hand painting original designs at a ceramic studio for seven years from 1989 to 1996. Lisa is inspired by many different methods and media. She has worked most recently with ceramic sculpture and the Coptic bound book, but retains a natural inclination to try new materials and art forms. Lisa has always been a great lover of nature and animals, and indeed, much of her work includes animals. She is also fond of combining different elements, and will often include found objects, and weathered pieces in her work.

artist statement

I am an introvert by nature, and spent much of my time as a child observing animals and the natural world. The comfort and beauty I have found there has also been a source of artistic inspiration. Much of my work points to the tendencies we have to exploit the natural world, and in my work I aim to bring focus to the beauty and the extraordinary that we stand to lose.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't compelled to create something. I've always been able to get lost in the process, following some inspiration or another. I see something that intrigues me, and I want to be able to do it, or I have an idea, and can't rest until I've figured out how to accomplish it. I am totally engaged in that process.

I also collect rusted, weathered things; broken and imperfect with their own history. These things often make their way into my work as elements of the sculpture, or as curiosities in my books. I love to build things, I love kinetic intrigue, and I love animals, and nature. My work is an amalgam of all these things.

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”

about

artist statement

Pablo Picasso