Lisa Hess Hesselgrave — Housing Works — New York Artists Equity Association

A Member Spotlight By Michael Gormley

“Mostly wooded and often dark, the places I inhabit are reimagined from memory and imagination and reflect upon the Germanic fairy tales of my childhood mixed with a dose of grown-up perspective.”

—Lisa Hess Hesselgrave

Discounting the precious few that have plotted an escape to a Thomas Kinkade La La Land, our feelings about home have never been so conflicted. Even in the best of times, home life conjures up a motherlode of primal associations relating to family, security, and self-image--either really good or really bad and rarely in-between. Throw in a pandemic lock down, and our feelings about home are further strained--because what we mean when say “home” has little if anything to do with an accommodating shelter. For the latter, an assemblage of construction materials, we use the word “house” or “apartment”. A home is likewise a construction, but its reality is not derived from the physicality of its building materials; its realness rests upon layers of cultural memories, lived experiences and heart-felt emotions that evince a steadfast effort to hold space for ourselves and others. It follows that artists, always game to skate on psychic thin ice, create depictions of home with imagery that seeks entry to the unconscious by courting the sublime. Few however truly get past the gates, and mistake saccharine indulgence for true sentiment. Lisa Hess Hesslegrave is the exception--her fabled series of housing works deploy a haughty surrealism--and using imagery that mimics our dreams---hits home every time.

Lisa Hess Hesselgrave, “Twilight,” 2010, pastel on board, 26 x 20 in

Though representational and imbued with narrative intent, Hesselgrave’s paintings, such “Fiery Sky”, “Twilight” and “Pink Steel” walk softy and say a lot with very little. At first glance, they appear near Spartan, with reductive compositions, simplified forms and color blocking strategies that seemingly embrace a modernist aesthetic. But an insinuating flair for the picturesque betrays a checkered allegiance to any overarching style. Torqueing forms and dramatic light effects hint at closeted Baroque intentions and a contrary and romantic reach for emotive content via a search for the sensual and the beautiful. All at once one sees Burchfield’s breathy shanties and Resika’s Cape Cod docks smoothed out with Maxfield Parrish’s moody lighting. Hesselgrave notes, “As an adolescent, I adored fashion illustration’s glorification of the beauty of the human face and figure, its flaunting of an elegant line or an insouciant sweep of watercolor wash. My adult work reflects my youthful longing to depict the flowy movement and drape suggested by women’s dresses. As a youngster I was also given a Norman Rockwell book and was fascinated by his skill and the clever way that he told stories. I joke that my work is the dark and stormy version of Rockwell.”

Lisa Hess Hesselgrave, “Pink Steel” ,oil on panel, 24 x 30 in., 2020

If Rockwell’s métier is stories, then Hesselgrave nails cautionary tales--with parables of home comings that accept the loss of innocence but insist that we persevere nonetheless. These days, most of us long to be outside. Inside, at home, we may still feel safe--but it is a forced safety--an austere and isolating hermitage. In this sense, we are all “homeless”. In Hesselgrave’s design, the privileged view is from outside the house, implying that not everyone gets to go inside. Like the trees that block our way home in “Monotype/ Forward” there is a seeming insurmountable barrier isolating “I” the outcast viewer from the “others” assumed to be comfortable at home--or just cozy in their own skins. Her works never depict front doors-- at best we are guided along by the occasional dim light at dusk peering out from a distant window pane. By birth or happenstance, artists have long assumed this “outsider” role; standing apart and once removed from the action of life, while at the same time paradoxically longing to be in the center of things, artists are uniquely situated to be fearless, if not ruthless, observers of the human condition. Art can be understood as the bridge that helps us all span the divide. Through art, we, like the artist, can “see” and be with the “other”. Hesselgrave adds that, “I was a quiet and introverted child. I rarely spoke but I found that I liked to draw. Labeled “an underachiever” in high school, it was art classes that saved me from a youth of idleness and ruin. Encouraged by my family, it seemed a natural choice to go to art school.”

Lisa Hess Hesselgrave, “Monotype / Forward ,” 2020, monotype

As we strive to stay connected to others and to ourselves in this time of alarming flux and uncertainty, Hesselgrave’s works offer a salubrious glimpse into a shared existence. She muses, “…. I like to suggest, rather than dictate or define a “narrative” hoping that viewers will grasp something that they recognize …something similar and shared, though from different places and times. In some ways it seems as if the current circumstances have simply come to meet me where I was already heading and coincide with changes in attitude that were already drifting my way: slower pace, more contemplative and inward looking.”

Hesselgrave, in the end, invites us to keep trudging the road, fortified now and again by the numinous mirage of a home on the horizon, where soon we will rest.

Lisa Hess Hesselgrave, “New Pink,” 2017, oil on canvas, 45 x 25 in

rtist Bio:

Lisa Hess Hesselgrave was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1958. She earned an MFA degree from the Yale University School of Art and a BFA degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her work has been included in shows throughout Connecticut and New York in many venues including the National Academy of Design, Tatistcheff Gallery, and The Painting Center. She has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center (2014), the Millay Colony for the Arts (1992, 2002), and the Seaside Institute, Florida (1996). She recently completed a three week residency in Tétouan, Morocco. Hesselgrave’s paintings and works on paper range in size, media, and subject. They focus mainly on figures, landscapes and the intersection of those two subjects. Although mostly representational the work is shaped by strong abstract qualities. In addition to her studio practice Hesselgrave has taught drawing, painting, color theory, and 2D design at several colleges, including the State University of New York, Purchase, the University of Connecticut, and Fairfield University. She currently teaches at Gateway Community College in New Haven. Hesselgrave lives with her family near the edge of the woods, just outside of New Haven. She continues to do work that experiments, evolves, and pushes boundaries, while maintaining a disciplined adherence to craft and a pursuit of personal content.

Interested in seeing more of Hess Hesselgrave’s artworks? Visit our Members Gallery or go to her Artsy Profile!