Francie Lyshak: Mysterious Visions

Artist Talk at the Phillips Museum, Franklin and Marshall at Franklin & Marshall College February 9, 2021

"Francie Lyshak: Mysterious Visions," an exhibit displaying hopes for healing, appropriate in this era of anxiety, opens in the Dana Gallery at the Phillips Museum of Art on February 9 and runs through April 30, 2021. 

"The artist, Francie Lyshak, has a background in art therapy; she uses her art as ways for people to emotionally engage with it as a healing technique," said Lindsay Marino, director of Franklin & Marshall College's museum. 

The 25 paintings New York City-based Lyshak are exhibiting feature animals and scenes with water and other natural landscapes. 

"They're very dreamlike in feeling," Marino said. "We've never had an artist here that was specifically trained in, and had a career in, art therapy and healing through artwork."

Lyshak, whose therapy centered on the psychiatric care for patients with trauma, states on her website that she "directs her focus inward to stare down and pick apart a lifetime of personal experience-some of it highly traumatic-offering viewers stories and spaces into which they can immerse themselves spiritually and emotionally as well as visually."

The exhibit is curated by Janie Kreines, the museum's curator of academic affairs and community outreach, through the organization Katharine Carter and Associates. With it, the museum offers a meditative space for reflection.  

The show will run from Feb. 9 through April 30. Lyshak appears virtually in an artist talk recorded on Feb 9, 2021.