Lisa Barthold

Lisa, a self-taught artist, didn’t begin creating her vibrant mosaic paintings until after she retired. Although she had always been passionate about art, life’s demands often got in the way. At the tender age of 13, she embarked on a career in the restaurant industry, trying various jobs until she settled on event planning. After retiring, she even briefly considered becoming a truck driver, only to realize that it wasn’t as glamorous as she had imagined.  

One of Lisa’s cherished pastimes is shopping at thrift stores, where she acquired colorful dishes, vintage items, and even more peculiar things like rusty nails, wrenches, and anything that caught her eye. When asked about her intentions for these collected items, she would simply say, “I have no clue.” However, a few years later, after taking a stain glass class and purchasing five pounds of leftover glass scraps, she discovered that all these items were precisely what she needed for her art. 

Lisa often creates mosaics using broken glass, but she also enjoys incorporating pieces of pottery, found objects from nature, and her collected treasures. Occasionally, she uses resin, but she avoids grout due to its messiness and difficulty in cleaning up. Lisa’s artistic style is characterized by a lack of planning. Her preference lies in color and whimsy, and she describes her mosaics as akin to assembling a puzzle without a photograph of the final product. She emphasizes that completing a piece of art often emerges spontaneously, leaving her in a state of surprise.

Prior to her the Oklahoma Visionaries Exhibit, Lisa had not exhibited her work in a gallery setting. Nevertheless, her creations have been showcased at the Creek County Fair and the Sapulpa Route 66 Blowout.