Lisette Forsyth

Lisette Bambine Forsyth, known professionally as Lisette Forsyth, was born in Windhoek, Namibia, in 1968 and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. Her varied creative life—as a model, photographer, graphic designer, traveller and artist—has given her a broad visual vocabulary and an enduring fascination with people.
Forsyth worked as a photographic model from her teenage years and travelled through Europe before returning to South Africa. Between 1992 and 1994, she completed an internship in mechanical graphics at Bayerischer Rundfunk in Germany. She later studied Graphic Design at Cape Technikon, majoring in photography and printmaking, and graduated in 1999. Her training is evident in the balance, rhythm and relationship between image and text that characterise her work.  Yet Forsyth’s approach is driven as much by curiosity as formal design. She experiments freely with materials, often keeping a found object for months or years before discovering the image it will eventually carry.

Historical documents and reclaimed surfaces have become central to her practice. Vintage Cape maps, government publications, newspapers, construction plans, books, driftwood and rusted metal arrive with existing histories. Forsyth works in conversation with these materials, matching subject to surface and allowing fragments of their original content to remain visible. This approach creates a continual exchange between past and present. The printed information beneath the paint may locate a work geographically, alter its meaning or introduce an element of irony. An official document can become the setting for a deeply personal image, while an obsolete map is given a new life through contemporary figures. Her subject matter is rooted in lived experience. Forsyth explores work, family, movement, community and the everyday negotiations of being human. Social and political observations often sit beneath apparently light-hearted scenes, while humour prevents the work from becoming didactic. Her figures are painted with warmth and empathy, but never sentimentally.

Forsyth has exhibited in Southern Africa and internationally, including presentations in Windhoek, Lisbon, Munich and New York. She was a finalist in the Vuleka Art Competition in 2007 and participated in the Harlem Fine Arts Show in New York in 2018. Her long relationship with StateoftheART has included five solo exhibitions: A Reflection of Us in 2014, Love Thy Neighbour in 2015, LAND in 2019, INTIMACY in 2021 and ALL THE BUZZ in 2024. In 2022, she created a temporary mural across the gallery’s windows for Cape Town’s International Public Art Festival.
Forsyth’s 2023 solo exhibition, A Thin Line, was presented at The Project Room in Windhoek. For ALL THE BUZZ, she turned to the social organisation of honeybees, drawing parallels between the cooperative life of the hive and the responsibilities people hold towards one another.

Her work is held in private and corporate collections in South Africa and internationally. While her subjects and materials continue to evolve, her paintings remain immediately recognisable for their expressive figures, inventive surfaces and ability to reveal new connections between image, language and history.

What is your favourite film of all time?
Each decade has it’s own film: the 80s The Outsiders; 90s Jesus of Motreal; 00s Little Miss Sunshine; and 2010 District 9.

What music are you currently listening to and why?
Bon Ivor because its easy listening and beautiful. When I am in the studio I listen to Fine Music radio, it is relaxing , undemanding has very little advertising. The long pieces help sustain a train of thought and it is also a way to keep in touch with what is going on culturally.
Most recently Listening to YO YO MAR and LP .

Which living artists do you most admire and why?
Paul Edmunds, his work is clever and original.

Which deceased artist do you most admire and why?
Brett Whitely because of his loose style and innovative use of materials.

Which exhibition that you have visited made the greatest impact on you and why?
Harry Wichat at the Smelik Stokking Galleries in Amsterdam. I loved his loose brush stroke and use of colour – it could also have been the hash chocolate.
Most recent exhibition that made an impact was work of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye in Munich, her use of colour. Stone cold sober.

What is the question you get asked most frequently about your work and how do you answer it?
Question I get asked most is where do I find my surfaces. I scavenge.

What/ who inspired you to be an artist?
My Father, when I asked what I should do after leaving school he suggested I do what makes me happy.

Can you tell us about where you make your art and what, if any, the significance this location has.
I have a studio in Woodstock, an industrial part of Cape Town. I feel a sense of productivity in the air. I also find the people that live and work here have a style and grace despite their limited resources,every move languid and rhythmic. The weathered and graffitied buildings are also an ever changing inspiration.

What do you like most about being an artist?
To have an outlet for my creative energy.

What is your greatest achievement as an artist to date?
Seeing a commission piece bring tears of joy.