lisa rasmussen is a versatile illustrator/graphic designer. She is proficient in graphite, watercolor, pen & ink, mixed media, acrylic, printmaking, and colored pencil. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design with a concentration in Drawing from Carnegie-Mellon University, an MS in Education from Russell Sage College, and an MFA in Graphic Design with a concentration in Illustration and book design from Vermont College of Fine Arts. For the last twenty years, lisa taught Visual Arts and Graphic Design at various universities throughout the region. In addition to teaching at the college level, she also teaches workshops in the community, lisa is currently on the faculties of Phipps Conservatory and the North Carolina Botanical Gardens teaching in their Botanical Art and Illustration programs. lisa loves making art and can’t imagine doing anything else. Artist Statement I see myself as an artist of multiple talents. I work in many different media over a variety of subjects. The tactile nature of creating my work is very important to me. The audience can see my hand in the works that I create. Drawing, painting and making things with my hands have become my peace and my solace, my portal to a different world. It is just me and the feel of the pencil or paint brush in my hand, the texture of the paper, mixing the paint, gliding the brush across the page and watching the watercolors intermingling on the paper, or pressing the pencil into the paper and seeing the graphite or ink marks changing from dark to light as I adjust the pressure and frequency of the marks, are all tactile and sensory experiences that attract me to work in this way. I always feel amazed that I can take a blank piece of paper and create a whole world on it if I want to. Much of the work I do is botanical in nature. I’ve always been interested in plants and flowers from when I was a little kid. I would go out to the back yard and look closely at the wild flowers that grew there. Part of me feels that making things with one’s hands is becoming a dying art. I want to keep that tradition alive.