Lisa Ivory
(b 1966. Lives and works in London)

“When asked as small child what I wanted to grow up to be, before I knew what an artist was, I would answer: an animal.”
Lisa Ivory

Lisa Ivory creates oil paintings and works on paper depicting fantastical creatures often erotically entwined with women. Her work is inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore, such as the tale of the Beauty and the Beast. Like these narratives, Ivory’s works allegorize the fear and attraction to otherness. In Ivory’s sensual paintings, illustrating sexual encounters under the semi-darkness of twilight, humans and beasts appear to couple tenderly. Her paintings and drawings of human-animal hybrids also reveal her creatures’ underlying innocence. Ivory’s fantasy world challenges conventional divisions between civilization and nature while insisting that humans possess animalistic qualities.
Ivory received a BA from Central Saint Martins in 1988. She has exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery, the Barbican Arts Group Trust’s Project Space, Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes gallery, Fragment gallery (NY), Pori Art Museum, Charlie Smith gallery, Ricco/Maresca (NY), Samuele Visentin gallery and Sim Smith gallery.