CABIN FEVER ARTIST TALK

Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern

During the closure of the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey due to the ongoing health crisis, we’re working on ways to bring art to you at home, virtually. This is one such effort, which we’re playfully calling Cabin Fever Artist Talks. For these, we’ve asked artists to tell us a little about themselves and their work. In some cases, they’ll be answering questions provided by the Art Center. In others, they’ll be showing us around their studio or highlighting works in progress.

For this installment, we hear from the New Jersey-based artist Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern. Lisa is an educator and figurative painter whose work is informed by a love of art historical images, and our contemporary culture of technology and fashion. The central theme of the work is based upon a duality– the coexistence of old and familiar with ever-emerging new material that challenges and assimilates established concepts. This manifests in the paintings as a blending of images, which often takes on a surrealistic quality. The surreal aspects of daily life are often more evident than are felt or acknowledged.

Lisa received her BFA in surface design from Parsons the New School of Design and earned her MFA in painting from New Jersey City University. She has exhibited in numerous solo and group juried exhibitions, in venues including The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, George Segal Gallery, and The Noyes Museum of Art in New Jersey, the Zhou B. Art Center in Chicago, and the Shirin Gallery in New York. She is an adjunct professor of painting and drawing at New Jersey City University and Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, New Jersey.

For more information about Lisa and her work, visit her website here: www.lisaficarelli-halpern.com