Lisa Avila

Lisa Avila studied art at the University of the South, then spent decades away from the easel — thirty-plus years training, riding, teaching, and showing dressage horses in New Hampshire and Texas. Art pulled her back: first through community theater, then as performing arts director and finally executive director of the Creative Arts Center in Bonham, Texas, where eight years surrounded by working artists got her painting again.

She retired to Placitas in 2020 and has painted full time since. She works in acrylic, watercolor, and mixed media, paints plein air with the Plein Aire Landscape Painters near Albuquerque, and serves on the board of the Placitas Studio Tour, where she has shown since 2022.

Lisa paints from photos, from life, and from her imagination, and keeps the three in deliberate balance. Color carries the emotion. She would rather cajole a viewer than challenge one, so her work leans toward the joyful and the slightly abstracted — representational, but never quite literal.

See her work in person at Ranchito Galería, 848 S Camino del Pueblo, Bernalillo. Open Fri–Sat 10–6, Sun 11–4. Lisa also teaches paint-pour and paint-night classes at the Galería — see the calendar.

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