Breathing Space

Lisa Moriarty came to art through a different kind of making entirely. Trained as an occupational therapist, she spent years working with cardiac patients, burn survivors, premature infants, and children with complex disabilities, learning firsthand how the body holds tension, how process creates safety, and how rhythm can restore what anxiety has scattered.

It was after the birth of her twin sons, both with significant disabilities, that encaustic found her. Taking introductory classes in the wax-based medium as a way to slow down, she developed what became her language. Repetition, accumulation, translucency. The quiet satisfaction of building something fragile into something whole.

Her work has since been placed in the Fairmont, Ritz-Carlton, and private collections across the country. It lives, as she does, between disciplines. Part assemblage, part textile, part installation, always reaching toward that veiled horizon of the Northern California coast she has carried with her since childhood.