Lisa Petker Mintz "Castle in the Sky 2"

Lisa Petker Mintz is a New York-based painter whose layered, tactile abstractions explore transformation, impermanence, and sensory memory. Working with acrylic, impasto, poured paint, and fabric, she builds dynamic surfaces that evolve through repetition, revision, and material intervention. Her paintings function as records of time and decision-making—accumulations of gestures that reveal both persistence and change.
Mintz’s practice begins with observation but quickly shifts into a physical dialogue with the surface, where structure and chance collide. Layers are added, scraped away, sanded, and rebuilt, creating compositions that hold tension between control and release. Color drives each work’s trajectory—anchoring or disrupting, accelerating or halting rhythm. This push and pull results in paintings that feel direct, alive, and unstable in the most generative sense, inviting sustained viewing and rewarding attention with shifting spatial and emotional relationships.
She was commissioned by NYU Langone to create seven paintings for the Spatz Postpartum Center and currently serves as President of The Painting Center in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include “Repetition and Ritual” at Hood College Gallery, following “Impulse and Improv” at The Painting Center in Chelsea. She has an upcoming exhibition at Adelphi University in Garden City, NY. Mintz is the recipient of a 2026 NYSCA grant supporting the development of monumental painting and sculpture, and previously received a grant from the Huntington Arts Council. Her work is held in private collections across the United States.

Artist Statement
“My work begins with observation but quickly shifts into a conversation with the surface; an intuitive, physical exchange where structure and chance collide. Each painting develops through repetition and revision, layering marks that are added, scraped away, and rebuilt. The surface becomes a record of time and decision-making, an accumulation of gestures that reveal both persistence and change.
Color drives the work’s evolution. It anchors or disrupts, accelerates or halts. A pour can alter the painting’s trajectory entirely, forcing a recalibration of rhythm and balance. I’m drawn to that instability—the moment when a painting takes on a life of its own.”
— Lisa Petker Mintz