Lysa Karell

 THE ARTIST

Lysa Karell inscribes her work within the lineage of demanding studios, where the precision of drawing meets a restrained emotion. Portraitist, painter, and illustrator, she works in pastel, black stone, graphite, and oil paint with a constant attention to matter and texture.

Her practice is grounded in a simple principle: everything begins with the gaze. Each portrait is born from the eyes ,  the first gesture on the page, the first breath of presence. When the gaze comes alive, the image inhabits itself, and the rest of the face begins to live. 

This quest for soul resonates with what nourishes her: the calm of the ocean, the slowness of landscapes, the attachment to an intimate Italy made of cities, workshops, and marble. She explores these mediums with a mastery of line and matter that seeks less virtuosity than incarnation.

INFLUENCES 

At the heart of her lineage stands Sandro Botticelli, first love and source of revelation: Venus as the birth of a gaze, the union of grace and creative force. Around this star gravitate the masters who sharpen her vision: Caravaggio (chiaroscuro and drama), Leonardo da Vinci (the science of detail), Albrecht Dürer (the learned line), Gustave Moreau (symbolism), Alexandre Cabanel (the elevation of classicism).

To these museums responds a graphic heritage that shaped her hand: the vitality of Walt Disney’s lines and the macabre elegance of Charles Addams. Lysa Karell embraces this dual belonging , demanding painting and spontaneous illustration as a fertile dialogue.

Her imagination is also nourished by symbols and territories: the mystique of New Orleans, calaveras and the celebration of life and death, cabinets of curiosities, entomology, anatomy, and human proportions. All converge toward the same aim: to capture the soul of the living.

EDUCATION

Lysa Karell’s artistic practice has been shaped by a balance between formal study and self-directed exploration, at the crossroads of established institutions and more independent paths.

An academic and international journey where the precision of line meets the creative freedom of a rebellious spirit, carried by wind and instinct.

Drawing & Painting (academic). Her training developed with instructors from Canada, the United States, France, and Lebanon, refining her sense of line, values, and the techniques of drawing and painting.

Art History. Complementary advanced programs completed with Sorbonne Université (Paris) and UQAM – Université du Québec à Montréal fostered both historical insight and sensitivity.

Sorbonne Université : a transversal program covering major cultural areas and artistic periods, from Antiquity to the contemporary era, with a focus on the Italian Renaissance, its symbolism, and its influence on modern and contemporary creation.

UQAM : a course centered on Indigenous arts and contemporary cultural dialogues, broadening her reflection on the plurality of artistic heritages.

She also completed specialized courses with the RMN–Grand Palais and the Centre Pompidou, reinforcing a rigorous methodological foundation and a symbolic reading of artworks.

This trajectory revives the spirit of the bottega: a place where study and transmission elevate the gesture, and where knowledge transforms into pictorial emotion.

ORIGIN OF ANIMAL PORTRAITURE

A turning point came with the arrival of Daividh Gilmour, a Shetland sheepdog with heterochromatic eyes and a faithful companion. More than a dog, he became for Lysa Karell an artistic catalyst: through him, animal portraiture emerged as an evidence, revealing another path in her art.

His name, written in Scottish Gaelic, carries a double echo: that of David Gilmour, guitarist of Pink Floyd  whose notes seem to carry the breath of the ocean — and that of Michelangelo’s David, timeless figure of perfection and sculptural power. This double heritage, both musical and artistic, embodies the meeting of two worlds dear to the artist: living vibration and classical beauty.

Thus, alongside her human portraits, was born a body of hyperrealistic animal portraiture, where each four-legged muse becomes memory, presence, and mirror of the soul.

COMMITMENTS

For Lysa Karell, art is inseparable from respect for life. Sensitive to biodiversity and animal welfare, she supports initiatives such as the WWF Foundation and La Maison d’Ariane (shelter and aid for women and children). Her work bears witness to an ethic: attention to fragility, dignity of beings, beauty to preserve.

ATROPA PARCAE — DEL VENTO GRAND GALLERY

As an extension of the studio, Atropa Parcae offers art editions and symbolic creations: myths, talismans, vévés, signs, and icons. Here we find her taste for black & white, cinema, and vintage popular figures, as well as her fascination with insects and anatomy.

Del Vento Grand Gallery connects the artist’s hand to contemporary dissemination: a bridge between tradition and the present. Each print is conceived as an art edition, upholding the quality and rigor of the original works.

Through this radical black-and-white practice, Lysa Karell embodies the gothic and timeless purity of the line. Her creations are rooted in iconography  from Byzantine icons to medieval religious engravings,  where the frontality and light of the line made the invisible visible.

Each figure she elevates, whether a contemporary presence or a face outside of time, becomes a modern icon, a living imprint of her universe.

Atropa Parcae thus reveals itself as a house of symbols, where the black line becomes a sacred language, heir to a visual tradition spanning centuries and reinvented by Lysa Karell with a singular vision.