Lisa attended Bennington College in Vermont, and New York State University at Albany for fine arts, then moved to Carmel, California, and attended the Monterey Peninsula College for art history and the Defense Language Institute for Spanish language training. Her travels began with her husband, an oceanographer for the United States Navy. Lisa resided in Cartagena, Colombia for four years, painting and sketching from the tropical coastal plains to the Andes. Pt. Barrow, Alaska was her next home, and Lisa continued to paint in oil, and then explored the mediums of watercolor and pastel. She began her show career 1976 at the US Naval Research Laboratory at Barrow.
Lisa then moved to the Washington, D.C. area where she continued watercolor studies, and began a career in professional picture framing. As a member of the Springfield Art Guild in Virginia, she exhibited in group shows at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, and area shows earning awards for her mixed media work. After moving to Montana in 1982, she continued her career in picture framing and participated in local group shows, and in galleries from Lake Tahoe to Cannon Beach, Oregon. Lisa has attended workshops presented by Frank Webb, Charles Reid, John Pollack, and Joe Abbrescia.
Currently the artist teaches classes privately, and through Flathead Valley Community College in watercolor, pastel, mixed media, and collage. She has presented classes in watercolor and mixed media in rural schools through Montana Arts Council grants. In June of 2005 Lisa developed a week long workshop “Dance into Art” with Northwest Ballet Company’s creator and previous director Carol Brannan. Action paintings were executed through dance movements to teach students the joy of interactive arts.
The mediums Lisa utilizes manifest many expressions of her pursuit to comprehend the intrinsic beauty of the natural world. Of course passions, moods, and conceptual process motivate the artist’s wide range of styles. She has explored a variety of traditional mediums for over thirty years as a learning procedure, and feels that each medium serves to convey her current state of growth and discovery. Collage, mixed media, and assemblage have been the artist’s mediums to convey auto-biographical narrative works. These pieces remain mostly in Lisa’s private collection. It is most likely this arena; along with the medium of relief sculpture in architectural applications will provide future challenges for Lisa’s work.
Lisa has received awards from her past associations with the Montana Watercolor Society and the national Professional Picture Framers Association. Her work was selected for the Montana Governor’s Mansion exhibit in 1996. In 2000 she was selected by the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce to create a painting for the prestigious Great Chief Award. Lisa is a regular contributor to the annual auctions that benefit the Yellowstone Art Museum, The Hockaday Museum of Art, Central School Museum, Big Brothers and Sisters, ALERT, Ducks Unlimited, Trout Unlimited, St. Matthews School, Samaritan and Hope Houses, The Winter Classic, the Montana Land Reliance, and Human Therapy on Horseback. She was selected to be part of a five-member panel to select the artists in residence for Glacier International Park 2003 and 2004. Her recent global endeavor is with Artists4Peace, an internet fund raising community for many important world charities.
Whether it’s painting, teaching, or framing, the principles of beauty, serenity and freedom are focal points for Lisa. The artist is blessed with her daughter Alethea a recognized journalist for Big Sky Journal and other publications, her talented son-in-law Eric Kincheloe and two healthy Grandchildren Ella and Isaac. Below is a favorite quote from renowned dancer and choreographer Martha Graham.
Martha Graham
Lisa Schaus
Lisa became an artist through immersion in a very creative family life. Her Dad Fritz Schaus was an integral part of the growing industrial design department at GE in Schenectady, New York until the mid 1970’s. Lisa’s Mom attended Pratt Institute and was an accomplished artist, excelling both at portraiture in pastel and costume design. Mari Kaestle, the artist’s sister was a star designer for Muppets and Mattel, receiving many awards for her designs. She is an expressive mixed media and art doll creator at the Curley School in Ajo, Arizona. A younger brother, Joe, is a renowned engineer for GE and delights in sculpture of whimsy.
And then there is inspiration. Where did it come from? Mostly from the excitement of living. I get it from the diversity of a tree or the ripple of the sea, a bit of poetry, the skirting of a dolphin breaking still water and moving toward me…anything that quickens you to the instant…