IWTA, Episode 50: Lori Cuisinier

Interview with the Artist

Lori Cuisinier is a painter and photographer whose work has been shown in the United States and Europe. The central theme in her recent paintings and drawings is self-portraiture. Specifically, this theme has led her through interpretation and reinterpretation of "self," as well as the inner world of her dreams. Her photographic images are featured in Academy Award-nominated director Mira Nair's 2006 film, The Namesake, in Adam Brooks’ 2008 film, Definitely, Maybe, staring Rachel Weisz and Mark Mann's 2013 film, generation Um..., starring Keanu Reeves. Lori maintains a studio in Southampton.

In this conversation, Lori talks about her many lives: as an athlete, a lawyer, a waitress, a jeweler, a coat check girl, and how one fall down a flight of stairs and a Leonard Cohen song prompted her to reinvent herself once again to become the artist she was always meant to be. Also- what inspired her new photography exhibition Desire, how she began to see her old journal entries as art, the vulnerability that runs through all of her work, and how everything she creates leads back to France.