Lisa Rickard’s artwork can best be described as Imaginative Realism. The figures in her paintings allegorically represent an abstract idea partially conceived while drawing in graphite prior to painting the dancing light she imagines flowing over human form. Born in Philadelphia, she fell in love with the allegorical figure as a teenager when she began drawing regularly from a live model who was a ballet dancer. She attended Temple University’s Tyler School of Art receiving her BFA in graphic design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design followed by two decades as a commercial artist in an advertising agency & the marketing department of a global corporation. Later, she mentored with classical realism oil painters to begin her journey in figure painting. Her insights into the power of the human form have been strengthened by time spent as a dancer & dance instructor. Her particular interest is painting the human form as a representation of an invisible reality. As she explains, “Allegory in visual art happens when the subject of the work & visible\ elements of the composition convey inherently invisible universal aspects.” The allegorical figure will always be her preference for visually communicating emotional states of mind or to personify abstract concepts like the idea of time embodied in the beautiful complexity of human form.