Lisa Blackshear is an oil painter based in Daytona Beach, Florida, whose work captures the luminous quality of light across coastal marshes, ocean vistas, and the distinctive mood of Florida’s Atlantic shore. Although her practice is rooted in plein air painting — working directly on location to absorb the particulars of light, atmosphere, and place — the studio is where her paintings find their deeper meaning. Time away from the motif allows her to move beyond documentation and into interpretation, layering oil, cold wax, and marble dust to build surfaces that hold not just color and form, but mood, memory, and tension.
BIO
Blackshear holds a degree in Studio Arts from the University of Minnesota (1981). After graduating she illustrated for the Minneapolis weeklies and helped found the Northland Poster Collective, creating work in service of community and social causes. She went on to New York, where in the late 1980s she was exhibiting expressionist watercolors in East Village galleries, part of a generation of artists working in an emotionally raw, image-driven vein. She went on to work as an illustrator for major American publications — including Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and the Village Voice — developing a trained eye for composition, narrative, and the demands of a deadline.
She began painting in oils in 2013 and spent twelve years as a working artist in Asheville, North Carolina, where she maintained a studio at Woolworth Walk Gallery and founded a plein air painting group that remained active for over a decade. Since relocating to Daytona Beach in 2025, Lisa has immersed herself in Florida’s coastal landscape and arts community — joining the Art League of Daytona Beach, showing in group exhibitions at Starry Night Gallery, and founding a new plein air group that brings painters together to work on location throughout the area. Her style is rooted in the impressionist tradition — colorful, expressive, and attuned to atmosphere — while evolving toward a deeper tonalism and greater realism as she immerses herself in Florida’s particular quality of light.
