I grew up with the stories and images of Catholicism, absorbing both the beautiful and horrific, and emerging with a paradoxical equanimity.  I bring this mysterious balance into my mixed media work, enabling me to comment on the conflicting
conventions of nature, human society, especially everyday life, and the human soul. Themes of memory, loss, and mortality weave through much of my work.
 

My hand-wrought aesthetic, learned at a young age from my family of hand-crafters permeates my detailed colorful compositions. I combine realistic rendering, line drawing, cartoon imagery, collage materials sourced from printed matter, fabric and
vintage handcrafted textiles and found objects. The layered compositions and contradictory imagery reveal a subtle humor and subversive underbelly, often imbuing the work with an enigmatic yet playful tone. Depictions of heaven and hell were ubiquitous in my parochial school education, and subsequent Art History classes as well as countless visits to museums, cathedrals and churches reinforced the doctrines and didactic imagery that formed my impression of the afterlife. My own beliefs have evolved beyond my early religious indoctrination, but the imagined euphoria of heaven and torments of hell remain indelibly lodged in my psyche.

- Lydia Viscardi

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Viscardi’s work is in the collections of the Housatonic Museum of Art in CT, Eastern CT State University, The Copelouzos Art Museum in Athens, Greece, and many private collections in the US and Europe.

 

Viscardi received a BFA from CW Post College of LI University, NY, and an MFA in Visual Art from William Paterson University of NJ. Her artwork is enriched by
her past employment as a Scenic Artist, Editorial Illustrator and Studio Art Adjunct Professor. She maintains a studio is in Newtown, CT.

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CV