Mary Lisa Chesnutt is an extraordinary artist from Chattanooga, TN. She studied at the University of Florida where she graduated with a Fine Arts Degree. She worked in Nashville and New York City for fifteen years as an apparel designer. Ms. Chesnutt now creates multidimensional, mixed media figurative dolls, paintings, and sculptures, many of them with “found objects.” Bonny Shuptrine said of Ms. Chesnutt’s work in a Chattanooga Times Free Press article, “that the assimilation of unique components and imagination characterizes the three-dimensional aspect of the artist’s mind.”
Ms. Chesnutt said that creation is an intuitive process for her. This intuitive ability helps to push her work beyond the intellectual. For example, she intuitively knows if a figure does not look quite right. It is the intellectual process that tells her what she needs to do about it. Much of her work reflects a spirit of sentimentality, romanticism and whimsy. She is a perfectionist about her work.
Sonia Young writes that, “Mary Lisa Chesnutt is a delightfully unusual person who is fragile in some sense with a child’s innocence and ability to see the good and beautiful in things. Her work is enchanting and should be experienced as it captivates the soul and delights the heart. About Mary Lisa Chesnutt it can truly be said, ‘the artist and her art are one.’”
