Do Not Disturb, 23" x 16", Cut Paper Collage
Elizabeth Johnson: Like you, for a long time I worked outside of the arts. For twenty years, my husband and I had a wallpaper installation business for interior designers in San Francisco. I loved the creativity of the job and meeting talented people. I enjoyed being inside tastefully decorated homes. Why did you decide not to become an architect? How did you segway into product design? What got you started making cut-paper compositions? Did you take art courses or study other cut paper artists?
Lisa S. Roberts: When I graduated from architecture school, the country was in a recession and finding work was difficult. I did eventually find a position and practiced architecture for six years. However, much of the work wasn’t particularly interesting, and the pay was extremely low: I was earning $10 an hour with a master’s degree!
I began thinking about other directions I might take and even applied to business school. Then, quite unexpectedly, a friend who owned an art gallery asked if I would become his agent and help license the work of his artists to manufacturers in the home furnishings industry. I knew absolutely nothing about licensing or the industry, but I decided to take a risk and learn as I went.
To educate myself, I read four years of back issues of Home Furnishings Daily (HFD), learning who the major manufacturers were, what they were producing, and which artists and designers they were licensing. Around the same time, I met a textile designer who worked in the field. He took me under his wing and taught me how coordinated design collections were developed and organized. He became the designer for my gallery-owner friend, and the three of us went into business together. We were very successful, creating and selling a multi-design collection to the home furnishings industry.
Lisa S. Roberts in the Studio
LSR: With my own background in design, I began to wonder whether I could create collections myself. I decided to go out on my own. I discovered cut paper as a way of creating imagery—a technique I fell in love with and have continued to use ever since.
That leap into an industry I knew nothing about ultimately led to a long career as an independent licensed designer and surface designer. Over the years, I worked with approximately 50 manufacturers, creating artwork and imagery for a variety of products. What began as an unexpected opportunity and a willingness to take a risk became an entirely new creative career.
EJ: To understand how you work, I watched your process videos. Do you take your own photos? It seems you cover the photo of a scene with tracing paper and make a traced master drawing. How do you create the master drawing on paper from the traced drawing? Is it pieced? Then you capture selected larger shapes with tracing paper to start building, working across the entire piece, sometimes protecting areas with more tracing paper. Do you choose color as you go? It looks like you build separate compositions for details such as books, chairs, and art, adding the smallest details last. How do you decide which details to keep? How do you glue the pieces?
LSR: I begin with an image, either from a photograph I have taken myself or one I’ve found in a magazine. I trace the image and then enlarge it on my copy machine, often printing it in sections and taping the pages together to create a working drawing larger than the copier itself can produce.
From there, I select my color palette and begin to “build” the piece. I work from back to front, layering one element over another. Each shape is traced from the enlarged drawing and then reverse-traced onto the back of a sheet of colored paper. I apply double-stick tape to the back of the paper and carefully cut out each individual shape before placing it into the composition.
Home Alone, 16.75" x 22.5", Cut Paper Collage
Lisa S. Roberts working in her studio
LSR: The process is painstaking and precise, but I am not trying to reproduce the original image exactly.
Instead, I simplify it, including only as much detail to capture its essence. I am constantly making decisions about what to include, what to eliminate, and how far an image can be reduced while still retaining its character. In that sense, the finished piece is not simply a translation of the original image. It becomes my interpretation of it, constructed through color, shape, layering, and simplification.
EJ: Your process raises a question about how architectural drawing informs your creativity: you deconstruct an image, then reconstruct it as an altered space.
Do you assess each photo or master drawing to decide how to build or what colors to use?
Do you imagine or remember walking through the location?
A Moment in Bloom, 21" x 17", Cut Paper Collage
LSR: One of the most important components of my work is color. I rarely try to reproduce the colors of the original image exactly. Instead, I intensify and reinterpret them, pushing the palette beyond what exists in reality to make the image feel more vibrant, expressive, and alive. People often tell me that they prefer my finished artwork to the photograph or image that inspired it. I think much of that response comes from my use of color.
EJ: Are the barely perceptible shadows between layers important to you? I notice some pieces such as A Moment in Bloom have this kind of depth, adding to the aesthetic of flowers. Is this a quality you like to play with?
LSR: The shadows in my work are created naturally by the layering of the cut paper. I like the shadows for that reason. They emphasize the physicality of the work and make my cut-paper technique more apparent. They become part of the artwork itself, giving it depth, texture, and a sense of being handmade.
EJ: I am drawn to how different your built image is from the original photo: it is simplified, but it also tells a new story about a chromatically lit and energy-harmonized space. Do you want all the information in the room to feel equally weighted?
LSR: Only in the sense that it looks like it was done by the same person with the same point of view. There needs to be a balance. When I am creating a piece, I don’t always know exactly where it is going. The process is intuitive rather than linear.
He Thought He Was Alone, 16" x 23", Cut Paper Collage
LSR: As the composition develops, I may change a color, move a shape, remove something entirely, or recut an element that doesn’t feel quite right. So, I don’t press the pieces down firmly as I work. I want to retain the freedom to move things around. That flexibility is an important part of my process. Although the technique itself requires precision, the way I arrive at the final composition involves a great deal of experimentation and instinct. It is only when the entire composition feels resolved and I know that everything is where it belongs that I press each element completely into place.
EJ: If your overall design sense keeps you from zooming in on captivating details through simplifying pattern, reflection, and planes, you are building a new experience, a space that is mostly flat surfaces except for the 3-D suggestion of the space that holds our gaze. Why does this kind of space fascinate you?
LSR: I like detail. I am naturally drawn to architecture and interiors that have layers of visual interest and lots to work with: moldings, windows, doors, columns, fireplaces, patterned surfaces, interesting furniture, all the small elements that give a space its individual character. I am less attracted to minimal modern spaces, where every line, proportion, and shape become important and there is nowhere for the eye, or the artist, to hide. But those spaces can be difficult for me to interpret in cut paper. I once created a house portrait for a client whose home was essentially a concrete box, and it was one of the most difficult portraits I have ever done.
EJ: Your work makes me think of Islamic and Indian art, both of which build beauty from flat color and shapes. He Thought He Was Alone is a beautiful interpretation of Japanese interior design. (I love the fish for the black cat.) How did this piece happen?
Le Corbusier Petite Club Chair, 11.5" x 11.5", Cut Paper Collage
LSR: It was based on a photograph I took in a hotel in Japan. I added many of my own elements: the wall hanging, the flowers in the vase, the book, and the pen on the table. The original photograph was more of a framework than something I was trying to reproduce exactly. I had created this scene once before, using a different color palette and different details. I wondered if I could return to the same basic composition and create an entirely different interpretation simply by changing the colors and some of the individual elements.
EJ: Considering the pets on chairs series, do you photograph the chair and pet separately then assemble a composite image? Le Corbusier Petite Club Chair is especially compelling, the use of orange, the tilted perspective: it really grabs my attention. What decisions go into pairing chair and pet?
LR: When I first started, I felt a little out of my element. Animals weren’t something I was accustomed to depicting, and I wasn’t sure how to make them feel like my own work. I decided to put the pets in chairs, and suddenly I became excited about the idea. Since furniture was familiar territory and I was comfortable interpreting its shapes, proportions, and details in cut paper, I realized I could make the personality of the pet work with the personality of the chair: the two could become part of the same composition rather than simply creating a portrait of an animal.
LSR: To develop the compositions, I found images of animals online, printed them out, and used a light table to trace their forms, experimenting with their scale and position, placing them in different chairs until the relationship between the animal and the furniture felt just right. What began as something outside my comfort zone ultimately became playful and completely natural to my work.
Captivated, 17" x 21", Cut Paper Collage
Lisa S. Roberts Studio Desk
EJ: The black cat seems to stand in for you or other people in your depicted spaces. Captivated gives us and him lots of wall art and windows to peer at and into. Is there a story about enjoying art behind this piece?
LSR: I wanted to create a gallery wall in a home, with a cat sitting quietly and looking at the artwork. I experimented with many different possibilities for what would hang on the wall, including several of my own abstract compositions. Eventually, I began looking through artwork I had created for some of my house portraits and came across this particular image. It immediately felt right. I liked that it was monochromatic, just like the cat. The artwork and the cat became the only black elements in the composition, creating a visual relationship between them and drawing the eye toward the center of the piece. I was very deliberate about preserving that relationship. I even made the piano brown, although pianos are typically black, because I didn’t want another large black element competing with the cat and the artwork. It is a small example of how I am willing to depart from reality when color and composition call for something different. I like the idea of borrowing from myself.
EJ: Would you call what you do engineering appearance? Do you see this work as being somewhat akin to reverse engineering an image by using your architectural drawing skills?
LSR: I’m not simply reverse engineering an image to reproduce it. I deconstruct it and then reinterpret it. I change colors, eliminate unnecessary details, add elements that weren’t there, and make compositional decisions as the piece develops. My architectural training may provide the underlying structure, but my artistic intuition ultimately determines what the finished piece becomes.
LSR: Working with cut paper presents certain limitations that have become an important part of my visual language. Unlike paint, I can’t easily blend colors or create subtle gradations. Instead, I use different colors, shapes, and overlapping layers to create a sense of depth and dimension. This is where my architectural training is particularly helpful. Architecture taught me to understand space three-dimensionally: to see how forms relate to one another, how planes overlap, and how perspective and proportion create a sense of depth. I draw on that understanding when translating a three-dimensional space or object into flat pieces of paper.
Lisa S. Roberts and her cat
EJ: Why do you put a black cat in many of your interior images?
LSR: I’ve had two gallery exhibitions over the past few years, and they taught me something unexpected about my work. In my first exhibition, I showed a number of interiors. On a whim, I placed a black cat in several of them. Every interior with a cat sold. None of the interiors without one did. For my second exhibition, I brought back some of those same interiors, along with new ones. But this time, every room had a cat. Every one of them sold.
That made me think about why the cat changed the way people responded to the work. I realized that an anonymous interior, no matter how beautiful or interesting, is still simply a room. But the moment you put a living creature into that room you create a narrative. Something is happening: Why is the cat sitting there? What is it looking at? Who lives in this room? What happened just before this moment, and what might happen next? The viewer begins to imagine a story.
I deliberately chose a black cat rather than a dog or even a more specifically rendered cat. Black cats already occupy a place in our collective imagination. They can be mysterious, elegant, mischievous, magical. Visually, I also love their sleekness and the simplicity of their silhouette. I keep my cats intentionally non-specific so that they can belong to anyone or, perhaps, to no one at all.
Another reason I chose a black cat: I have one. So, although the cat has become a recurring character in my work, it also began with something very personal. What started almost accidentally has become a kind of protagonist quietly inhabiting these rooms and inviting the viewer to imagine the story taking place within them.
––Elizabeth Johnson
(elizabethjohnsonart.com)
edited by Matthew Crain
(@sarcastapics)
The Mud Room, 25" x 21.5", Cut Paper Collage
Interested in works from this exhibition?
Explore available paintings from Lisa S. Roberts: Quiet Home, with pricing and purchasing information available through our online shop.
Lisa S. Roberts, Photos Courtesy of Kelly Turso
About the Artist
Originally trained as an architect, Lisa found a greater passion for graphic and product design. Over three decades, she designed in the gift and home furnishing markets for more than 50 diverse manufacturers. Her designs were applied to dinnerware, textiles, paper tableware, clocks, watches, wrapping paper, greeting cards, and many more.
She also created meticulous cut paper collages of architecture and interiors that were reproduced onto notecards and branded products for museum stores and hotels. Private clients commissioned her to create portraits of their homes.
Intermittently, Lisa took breaks from designing and wrote four books about contemporary product design: Antiques of the Future, DesignPOP, Mr. Waffles Loves Design, and What is Good Design: A simple question without a simple answer. She was also featured in a TV docu-series titled, “My Design Life.”
In 2020, during the pandemic, Lisa’s work changed direction again. She let go of the constraints of product and architecture, and evolved into abstract art. With her love of color and working in cut paper, she found respite in abstraction. She loved the ‘high’ she got when putting just the right colors together and then letting them tell her where to go.
When not sitting at her work table with papers, surgical scissors and double-stick tape, Lisa sits on the boards of the Philadelphia Art Museum, Collab, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and Poor Richard’s Charitable Trust.