Lost Art Found By Local Artist Lisa Mair
by Katy Savage, Standard Staff
Each step on the stairwell to Lisa Mair's studio is a painting. On one step is her yellow farmhouse. On another is a painting of her black horse grazing freely. There are large trees and green grass on others.
Upstairs a horizontal wall mural hangs about 20 feet long. On it, there is the village of Weathersfield with a church and houses and mountains in the background.
Mair keeps a checklist on a dry erase board. She's working on about a dozen floor cloths and wall murals right now.
One wall mural has about 10 horses cantering with riders on their backs. Beagle dogs are running at the horses' sides and there are mountains in the background. It's a foxhunting scene with Jaime and Thatcher Fields' Hartland home painted in the distance. The Fields' creme color house was built in the late 1700's and was renovated five years ago. Once complete, the wall mural will hang like wallpaper, 14 feet wide in their dining room.
"It will give us an appreciation of the historical past of the property," Jamie said.
Thatcher added: "In the middle of a bleak Vermont winter, there will be something green."
Mair started painting wall murals on canvas cloths five years ago, but she's been making floor cloths much longer.
Floor cloths originated in Europe in the 14th century and became popular in the 1700's. When people came to America, they were looking for ways to decorate their homes. Those who didn't have any money or access to rugs, made designs and sketches on canvases.
Floor cloths were a booming business from the 1840s-1860's until linoleum was invented in 1869. Floor cloths disappeared after that.
"Most people don't know what a floor cloth is because they've sort of vanished," Mair said.
She started Canvas Works Floor Cloths around the same time she moved into her 19th century house, 20 years ago.
Her yellow farmhouse was built in the 1790's. There are wooden beams and colorful, geometric cloths, hand painted by Mair, covering the imperfect floorboards. The house was renovated in the 1830's and has had little renovation since.
"It has a lot of character," Mair said.
Mair's house has inspired the earthy and muted color palette that is seen in her work.
"My house begs me to paint as if I were decorating in the 1800's," Mair said.
Mair has always been self-employed. She had a horse business after she graduated college and then was an architectural model maker before she illustrated children's books.
Her first floor cloth was a "whimsical children's book illustration," Mair said. It had artichokes, eggplant and asparagus swirling around a center circle. Mair's friend soon requested a floor cloth and Mair started making more.
"It got the ball rolling," Mair said.
Mair has made nearly 1,000 floor cloths. They lie in historic homes in West Windsor, Hartland and Woodstock and in houses and museums across the nation. "My goal was to make enough money to be able to sustain myself and my horses," she said. "That's continued, but now that I have so much work I don't have time for the horses."
Mair starts painting and drawing in her studio at 7am and works for most of the day. She takes a break to rider her horses in the afternoon and then answers emails and does research on her iPad over dinner. She goes back to work in her studio at night.
Mair starts with a large canvas and then shrinks the material in hot water. She cuts the canvas to the size she wants it then hems the edges. Mair paints the front and back with a layer of glaze and then begins the design process.
She uses laser lights to get perfectly straight lines. Sometimes it can take days just to lay out a pattern.
Each canvass has 7 -8 layers of paint. The result is a durable material that can withstand scratches, dirt and foot traffic.
When she started, she didn't know her business would become so successful. She's booked until January.
"I work most of the time," Mair said. "It's a little crazy."
Most of her floor cloths are repeated patterns and geometric shapes. Wall murals are a different story.
Her murals show houses, scenes and animals. She started making them after she realized people didn't want to walk on them.
Murals are more difficult for Mair to make.
"Sometimes I don't feel like working on them and that's the toughest part. I want them to look good, but if I don't feel like doing it it's not going to look good."
Mair travels throughout the country to research houses and sites, do shows and teach classes.
She also donates her work. After Green Mountain Horse Association was damaged in Tropical Storm Irene, Mair started painted GMHA's brown barns and wide open fields on a canvas. She painted her horses jumping the cross country course.
"I was feeling so bad about GMHA after Irene and it was haunting me," Mair said. "I just started painting what GMHA was supposed to look like."
GMHA has sold a poster replica of the painting and has made about $5,000 according to Mair.
She'll later start work on a check design with a Greek key border 40 feet long for a museum in Chicago.
You can visit her website at canvasworksfloorcloths.com
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