Lisa Solberg

I’m drawn to people who express themselves without calculation. Photography, painting, film, writing, or something nobody’s quite figured out how to categorize yet—when someone’s making work from genuine interest rather than design, you feel it.

Lisa Solberg’s an artist in LA making paintings that exist outside whatever wave everyone else is riding. She has this singular voice in her work, and she operates out of a massive loft that’s a studio and a home at once. I’ve always had this inexplicable thing for huge empty lofts with that particular kind of presence—you know the ones, where there’s actually space for something to happen.

One of her paintings was made with champagne. Not a conceptual move or a story to tell; that’s just what she wanted to paint with that day. I appreciate that about artists—pursuing whatever actually interests you, regardless of whether it makes a coherent statement.

The work doesn’t ask permission. It’s just completely what it is.