Bio - Lisa Semerad Lisa Semerad grew up in Chicago and moved to Virginia in 1970. She has been a professional artist and teacher in the Washington DC Metropolitan area since 1982. Lisa's expertise is in diverse drawing and painting techniques, in both academic and contemporary expressive styles. Hundreds of her landscapes, portraits and figure drawings scatter America in books and in private and corporate collections. Her education is in Fine and Commercial Art with two years of specialization in formal portrait and figure painting and drawing. She was the apprentice of prominent Washington, D.C. area painter Danni Dawson and in Philadelphia with Nelson Shanks. Mr. Shanks is known for his portraits of Princess Diana, President Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pavoratti to name a few. His portraits of Denise Graves and Bill Clinton are the museum of American Art. Initially, Lisa taught at a small co-op in Occoquan VA , The Arlington Art Center and the Emerson Gallery in McLean where she started the first colored pencil and graphite techniques courses on the East Coast. For the past 27 years she has taught exclusively at The Art League School in Alexandria, located in the Torpedo Factory Art Center on the historical Old Town waterfront. Her courses are in portrait and figure drawing, design basics and painting. During semester breaks, she conducts oil pastel, graphite techniques and line workshops. She also leads critique workshops at Photoworks in Glen Echo Park. Annually Lisa leads travel workshops with emphasis on creative breakthroughs. For 5 years she took students to Tuscany and last year Antigua, Guatemala. "Nothing will loosen you up like climbing an active volcano!" In addition to teaching, Miss Semerad was a commercial illustrator for 15 years. Her clients included Time-Life Books, United Way, National Hospice, The Smithsonian's NSRC, The National Zoo, The National PTA, Freedom From Hunger, The National Academy of Science and United Health Care to list a few. She tends to pick jobs that involve education. Her fine art career is centered on less academic lines. She is currently working in oil pastels, encaustic and mixed media combining her draftsmanship with more symbolic, 3 dimensional and abstract components inspired by her travels to Portugal, Italy and Guatemala. "I enjoy media that has a bit of its own agenda. It provokes me to be responsive and inventive. Not knowing what will result and having less control is far more interesting for me now." .