About

Lisa Jones Gentry first began showing her work professionally in Los Angeles in the late nineties. Her first show was at the M Hanks Gallery in Santa Monica California, as part of a group show. That exhibition was followed by several other group shows, including at Loyola Marymount University. Her initial solo show was at the Vanek Collection Gallery in Venice California. Gentry's work has been shown in galleries and major exhibitions around the country. She works out of her studio in Georgetown, Washington DC.

Most recently, her work was exhibited at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. The piece that was shown is acrylic collage on canvas and mixed medium and is entitled BLACK GIRL MAGIC (72x96) It was the only painting in the exhibition entitled The Gathering: A Collective Sonic Shout, curated by Pier Penic of the Smithsonian.

Artist Statement

My work is primarily abstract, both acrylic on canvas and mixed media on canvas.

I consider myself to be part of the Contemporary Afro Futurism movement in art. Afro Futurism has been described as….an evolving concept expressed through a Black cultural lens that reimagines, reinterprets and reclaims the past and present for a more empowering future for African Americans (Smithsonian Museum of African American History & Culture, Afro Futurism, A History of Black Futures 2023).

For me Afro Futurism in art as reflected in my work is a way of looking within to see a world that is beyond that which we see with our physical eyes. By looking within, I believe that we are able to transmute and neutralize some of the pain that is part of the historical and present-day experience of African Americans and other descendants of the Diaspora as well as Africans on the continent who suffered under the chains of colonialism.

My work represents a look inside out, a deconstruction of the unspeakable to reveal the inner peace and love that is always there even in times of despair. For me that world is awash in brilliant color and abstraction that represents the pain in a way that allows us to hopefully move beyond it into a new present day reality where it can no longer define or limit us.

I believe that in abstraction, there can be peace because we are able to overcome that which has kept us in emotional shackles even after the removal of physical restraints. I paint and create that new reality that has been opened up to us as individuals who have overcome and now can fully claim a new future.