Woman follows in her mother's steps
PROSPECT — “A Butler County treasure” is how fellow artist Mary Kay Richardson described Lisa Sten, a portrait artist for most of her life.
“I do a lot of other kinds of art, too,” said Sten, whose mother was also a portrait artist.
“I take walks in parks or woods ... or if I'm at a coffee shop or somewhere, I take my sketchbook. I really like that,” said the 61-year-old.
“Once in a while, I do landscapes, mostly 'en plein air' (in open air),” taking her just an hour or two to complete.
“I do that more than I used to, now that the kids are all grown, and I have more time,” said the Prospect resident.
Her process for portraits is somewhat different, beginning with taking photographs of the subject to be painted.
“I get an idea of what they have in mind,” Sten said. “And then I make sketches, and they pick one.”
She said she likes to sketch the person in real life briefly before starting a portrait.
“Very rarely do people sit for a whole portrait,” Sten said. “I would love it if they would, but people usually don't want to take that kind of time.”
That's one reason Sten said she enjoys participating in a portrait group at The Butler Art Center, 344 S. Main St., where artists practice painting from real-life models.
Her mother, Romaine Foringer, died when Sten was 25, but had completed many portraits.
“She was very prolific,” Sten said. “And her customers let me pick up the work.”Sten said she doesn't think she knowingly learned portrait painting from her mother, “but I would talk to her while she was painting, so maybe I was paying more attention than I thought.”The time it takes for Sten to paint a portrait varies, she said.“It really depends ... the one I'm working on now probably took a week,” she said.“It's a head and shoulders. It's almost done. It doesn't need too much more or it will be too much. There's a fine line between hitting the spot and going over it.”She works in pastels and oils for portraits.“My mom did pastels, and I like trying new things so that's how I got into oils,” Sten said.She doesn't use watercolors for portraits but does for landscapes, and she has done some landscape commissioned work, she said.
That number doesn't yet compare to the hundreds of portraits she's done, though Sten said she has noticed that the availability of photography has really taken a bite out of interest in painted portraits.She has had gallery exhibits, including one last summer along with Stan Walchesky at The Butler Art Center, and has taught classes.She continues to take workshops “because artists really learn a lot that way,” she said.She said she entered contests when she was younger, “but I feel like I've kind of outgrown that. I'm in a different stage of life.”Samples of her work can be seen at LisaStenPortraits.com.
