Five Questions with Artist Lisa Marie Hunter

Eric Todd
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NANO Editor, Eric Todd, interviews Lisa Marie Hunter, the featured artist for our upcoming issue. To pick up a copy of 7.1, head over to our online store.

Eric Todd: Most of your recent work has been in black and white. Why does that appeal to you?

Lisa Marie Hunter: Well, the black and white images were a result from having limited painting materials. I moved around a bit and only had a few suitcases with me… a couple of brushes and a few bottles of ink. I since moved back to Houston, but found that I enjoyed the material limitations. Working with just the black ink posed more challenges for me and pushed me to really explore value ranges within it.

ET: Your drawings often contrast a sort of ethereal playfulness with something darker, more sad, and even sometimes a little sinister. How much of that is informed by the way you see the world?

NanoCoverV6N2LMH: You know those moments in life when you feel so terribly uncomfortable so you just laugh? Or you know if you open your mouth it’s just going to be really awkward? It’s kind of like that I guess.

ET: How would you describe your process? How much do you plan/research before you make a drawing?

LMH: I just sit down and start drawing. I’ve just always been that way. I rarely sketch anything out or plan a composition. I usually start out with a circle because I like drawing them. That circle turns into a face and I know where my body will be. After that I build up the surroundings. I just sort of get lost in the image and see where it leads me.

ET: Often recently your work has included forest scenes. What is it about arboreal imagery keeps your interest?

LMH: I felt a dreamy, romantic relationship to land and especially trees when I was young, I suppose I am just revisiting those memories. I love the wilderness but these days, rarely find myself in it. City life is so cramped and contrived. It seems that hard lines rarely exist in nature, I like that organic spontaneity. I imagine trees are like nerve endings to the earth, absorbing all this crazy energy we’ve been creating. This gets pushed down into the ground, which is then spit up and redirected in weird ways. The earth is like “WTF is this? Here, you can have it back!” Then meteors hit the earth and we realize we have bigger problems.

ET: All your social media handles are “Little Cloud.” What’s the significance behind that?

LMH: That all came about several years ago. I didn’t want to use my real name on facebook and the like. It just kind of stuck after that.

Lisa Marie Hunter was born in Houston, Texas in 1981. Lisa studied at The Glassell School of Art, MFAH, where she received a certificate of achievement in Works on Paper in 2006. Her current work consists of illustrative ink drawings reflecting her thoughts on experiences and how they can transform into personal mysticism through psychology and the perceptual process.