Artist statement
Winner of the British Society of Women 2025 President and Vice Presidents' Award. Expect colour, expressive mark-making and layered mixed media. Inspired by the drama and sensory experience of landscape, wild seascapes and untamed florals. My process is grounded in nature and informed by a background in graphic design, life drawing and psychotherapy.
Extended Bio
Lisa Parkyn (b. 1975, South West Africa) is a painter who spent her early life on a remote farm in the Kalahari semi-desert, Botswana. Growing up in a family of painters, she developed an early affinity for art before pursuing studies and a career in graphic design in South Africa and London. While working in London, she completed a degree in movement psychotherapy, further enriching her understanding of expression and human form. After traveling internationally, she settled in Devon in 2008, where she gradually returned to painting – first through portraiture and landscapes, before evolving toward a more abstract and process-driven approach.
Winner of the Society of Women Artists 2025 President and Vice Presidents’ Award; Parkyn has exhibited widely in national and regional open exhibitions, including the Society of Women Artists (2025, 2024, 2023, 2022), South West Academy Open (2024, 2023, 2022), and Figurative Art Now (2021). Her solo exhibitions include Wild Nature (Fine Foundation Gallery, Dorset, 2026), Evoke (Malthouse Gallery, Lyme Regis, 2025), Resonance (Sou’ Sou’ West Contemporary Gallery, 2024), Layers & Light (Malthouse Gallery, Lyme Regis, 2021), and Delving Beneath (Kennaway House, Sidmouth, 2021).
Recent group exhibitions include the Chelsea Art Society 75th Annual Exhibition (2024), Artizan Women’s Open (2024), Esprit (Malthouse Gallery, 2024), Responses (Malthouse Gallery, 2023), Replenish (Malthouse Gallery, 2023), Pop Up 22 (Sou’ Sou’ West Contemporary Gallery, Bridport, 2022), Memory & Emotion (Artizan Gallery, 2022), Echoes (Lyme Regis, 2022), and Spring Selected Artists (Artizan South West Contemporary, Torquay, 2022).
Her work is held in private collections across the UK, as well as in Africa, Japan, and Mauritius. In addition to her painting practice, she has led numerous art workshops since 2020.
