MEET LISa

Hi my name is Lisa and I would love to help you navigate the weird and wacky world of undertones.  I often tell clients no one should have to do this by themselves- choosing color is too tricky.  But I have a brain full of paint knowledge so you don't have to.  Here's my story.

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I started in the paint business in '98 when I answered an ad that offered a company car & laptop. Fresh out of college, I needed both desperately so I showed up to the interview naive and hopeful and a month later I was driving my Sherwin-Williams issued minivan across Arizona, stopping at Walmarts along the way.  My job was teach their staff ( who I lovingly called the WalMartians) how to sell paint and color.  Remember all that faux finishing in the early 2000s.....yeah, that was me. I really just needed a car.  I had no intention of falling in love with paint.  But somewhere along the way, I fell head over heals in love with it.

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Over the decades I moved up the ladder with Sherwin Williams and relocated to NC. I became an A&D Rep where I now trained architects & designers how to specify the right paint for their projects. It took me inside the world of the interior designer, developer and builder and because I spoke both the techie side of paint and the design side of paint I spent a lot of time in front of a podium.   Some of the highlights were teaching at Design Schools across the southeast and presenting the color forecasts at Vegas and High Point Markets.  Even got to name colors while working on cool projects such as Historic Colors of Charleston, Chrysler Museum of Art and Historic Jekyll Island.  That job was so cool.  I met the most talented and lovely designers that are still my friends today. Then in 2010 I moved into the Powder Coatings world where I now became color support for A & Ds doing BIG international projects. This was a world full of long manufacturing plants and lots of shiny things.   I love shiny things. 

 

During the recession years,  I took off my suit, put on my overalls & became a decorative painter.  Lots of time spent on scaffolding and playing in that bright, luminous world of metallic finishes.  This is where I began to understand paint through a scientific lens.  Mixing pigments and colors, paint showed a side of itself  that was much more complex and sophisticated than I could explain from a podium.  On an aesthetic level paint certainly will change the vibe of a space.  But there was a whole world of light theory and physics  that deepened my relationship with the material.  It humbled me and that's when I became Paint's muse. As if we remembered each other from long, long ago.  Maybe in a cave somewhere painting a buffalo. This is when I really fell in love with paint and knew I wanted more. So I followed it to Israel.

~ PAINT in ISRAEL ~

 

In 2014 was selected to become a member of the International Conservation Team in Israel, serving as a consultant for paint, color and historic decoration. I studied under Shai Farkash, the lead conservator of decorative painting for the Israel Antiquities Authority and worked on projects in Tel Aviv, The Old City of Jerusalem, Caesarea and Ancient Akko. The project was funded by UNESCO & The Israeli Antiquities Authority. I spent a lot of time on scaffolding, drinking coffee and scraping paint. Oh the stories those walls would tell. From that experience I learned two important things: the difference between preservation and restoration and that even old paint is holy in Israel.

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Upon return to the states, I applied the restoration skills I had learned in Israel & was awarded the job of restoring the 1930s art deco ceiling fresco in the Historic Wells Fargo Bank in Belmont, NC.  More stories from walls and peeling paint. And yeah, that bank was full of the spirits of those old textile bankers. I brought in my brilliant and uber-artistic niece Ash Valentine from LA to help.  We would work deep into the night after bank hours, twelve feet up on scaffolding and hear things moving around below us.  In the end those ol ghosts loved the ceiling we brought back to life.  That was such a cool experience. 

 

Then in 2016 I finally got off the scaffolding for good and took a Color Marketing Manager position with Benjamin Moore in Charlotte.  A position that coalesced everything I had learned so far over the last 20 plus years.   I say that I learned about paint from Sherwin Williams but I learned color from Benjamin Moore. And they are very good at it.  I was certified by them in 2016 as an Architectural Color Consultant and helped develop the 400 level training course called "Why did my White Dove turn Yellow?" I trained in-house color consultants, designers, students and painters; diving deep into the pigments, formulas and the science of creating color.  Another fascinating layer of love for the material that was new to me.  I Loved that job. 

 

Then in spring of 2020 the pandemic hit and like many I was laid off.  The next day I became a full time color consultant.  What started as a big experiment has become my career today - A full-time paint consultant with a full offering of color services to keep it simple for people.   I use every bit of knowledge gained from my 25+ years in the paint business and feel very lucky to have had such great training from the biggest paint companies in North America. It makes me a great color consultant for you because I speak Designer and I speak Painter.  Both are equally important in getting color right. I get to see people go from overwhelmed to excited everyday and Im always flattered to be part of  their transformation.   Paint is a whole thing.  I am here to make it easy, fun and right!

Lisa J