NUDE IN MIRROR 30" x
36" WSKG PRICE: $300
THE ARTIST'S SINK 30" x
36" WSKG PRICE: $200
Lori Schleisner was born in Cologne, Germany in 1925. She began
learning to paint at the young age of 6, when a man who sold paint
powder rented a room in her family's large apartment. The man
taught Lori to mix the powder with linseed oil and brush the paint
onto pieces of plywood. At the age of 10, Lori began to study
portrait sketching with the famous expressionist painter, Ludwig
Meidner.
When Lori was 13, the Nazis seized Germany and Lori and her
family escaped to Belgium and Brussels where her father was sent to
a French concentration camp, and Lori and her mother were hidden by
a Christian doctor. During this difficult period Lori continued to
study art and clothing design, eventually establishing herself as a
dress designer. In 1949, she moved to New York to work for the
Simplicity Pattern Company and study at the renowned Art Students
League, where such artists as Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock,
Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Norman Rockwell honed
their craft.
When Lori had her two children she made a decision to give up
her job as a designer to focus on her painting. When her
daughter and friends expressed an interest in learning to paint,
Lori decided to open her own art school in 1964. Lori had a
very successful 40 year career running this school where her
students have gone on to become art teachers, designers in fashion
and advertising, and freelance painters. Lori also led art
tours to the great museums of New York City for many years.
Some of her expressionist themes are her "closet series", nudes,
and her own flower gardens. A very different style was
her period of "striped paintings" which portrayed people of
color behind stripes on the canvas. "I was trying to show that
they are in jail, behind a gate, you could call it." In her
later paintings, she lost interest in painting "politically"
preferring to "be free and unrestricted". Lori's artwork has won
many awards and has been exhibited in both the metropolitan NY area
and Ithaca, where she now resides.
