BIO
Francie Lyshak (b. 1948, Detroit) is a painter whose work explores emotional truth through color, texture, and minimalist gesture. Trained in Paris and at Wayne State University (BFA), she later became an art therapist (MPS), using art to support trauma recovery. Her early narrative paintings, created before she consciously remembered her own experiences of childhood sexual abuse, became the basis of her visual memoir The Secret: Art & Healing from Sexual Abuse
(Safer Society Press, 1999).
A longtime member of the East Village arts community in NYC, Lyshak was a Second Wave feminist whose emotionally charged work stood in contrast to the intellectual restraint of the 1970s and '80s art world. Over time, her practice evolved into abstraction, retaining its emotional depth while shedding fear and rage. Her current work is raw, elemental, and deeply
felt-crafted with minimal materials to evoke pure emotional states. Lyshak's work has been exhibited in galleries, juried exhibitions, and museums, and is held in
private and institutional collections in the U.S. and Europe.
