Lisa Brice

Lisa Brice, born in 1968, is a South African painter and visual artist based in London. She is known for her paintings that are inspired by her early life in South Africa, her life in London, and her time spent in Trinidad. Brice studied at Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town, graduating in 1990, and worked as a printmaking assistant to artist Sue Williamson from 1988 to 1991.

Brice started out working with printing, photography, video, and other mixed media. After moving to the UK, she began to work predominantly in oils and canvas or paper and is now better known as a painter. In the late 1990s, Brice began spending time working and in residence in Port of Spain, Trinidad, where she met and collaborated with other artists such as Peter Doig and Chris Ofili, and together they set up CCA7 (Caribbean Contemporary Arts).

Brice has had over 20 solo exhibitions in South Africa and around Europe since 1993 and almost 100 group exhibitions around the world. Her work is held in collections around the world, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Johannesburg Art Gallery, The Whitworth, the High Commission of South Africa, London, and the private collection of Sindika Dokolo.

In 2018, Brice exhibited at Tate Britain as part of Art Now, exhibitions for new and emerging artists. The exhibition featured "recast female subjects from art historical paintings, photographs and the media into new environments, imbuing them with a newfound sense of self possession." Many of the paintings show the women rendered in a rich blue paint which echoes Brice's Trinidadian experiences of carnival, in which revellers known as 'blue devils' paint themselves blue for anonymity. The exhibition was well received by the British press, who praised Brice for "an important reclamation of the female body."