Combining Two Passions
"I'm a rider," says Lisa Marie Bishop, "before I'm an artist." Her passion for the horse shines through in each brushstroke — some canvases, like the 10-by-12-foot New York Half Pass, commissioned as the focal point of a New York City residence, seem larger than life.
Painting was neither Bishop's first passion nor her intended career. But when she found her equestrian pursuits in limbo after being diagnosed with a hereditary disease that will eventually lead to the loss of all central vision while leaving some peripheral vision, she had to find a new path.
"That was where my art started," she says, "and why it exists today. My artwork wouldn't have happened if I wasn't going blind."
Act I: The Rider
Hailing from upstate New York, Bishop didn't start riding until she was 12 — and was jumping by her fourth lesson. She became a working student under well-known horsewoman Doris Clarke at Fox Run Farm in Aurora, New York. Her Thoroughbred gelding, Beetle Bailey, earned the USEA Bronze Medal at the preliminary level and was named the 2007 Intermediate MDCTA Horse of the Year. They then competed at the Advanced Level, and was on the talent squad, until an injury sidelined " Red" to a lower level retirement.
In her early twenties, Bishop was diagnosed with Stargardt macular degeneration, a genetic eye disorder causing progressive central vision loss. As her condition advanced, she made the difficult decision to leave eventing — on her own terms — in her late thirties.
Undeterred, she turned to dressage. In her forties, she began training aboard a Percheron-Thoroughbred cross named Graphite, earning her USDF Silver Medal three years later. She is currently training her young horse, Lunaria, at WinterHaven Farm and Dancer Dressage in Florida.
Act II: The Artist
Self-taught and working primarily in acrylics — sometimes augmented with charcoal and oils — Bishop completes roughly ten paintings a year. Her work has reached the international stage: The Master was presented to British Olympic gold medalist Carl Hester at the 2017 NEDA Symposium; Showstoppers, depicting Charlotte Dujardin aboard Valegro, was auctioned to benefit Brooke USA at the 2018 NEDA Symposium.
Her clients include top competitors such as Lauren Spreiser, Jessica Jo Tate, Endel Ots, Mary Phelps, Vera Kessels, Carl Hester, Marne Martin Tucker, Lisa Dickman, Nicole Dean, Juan Matute Sr., Karen O'Connor, Scott Durkin, and many others. Today her work is also on display at Gisela Pferdekaemper's Studio Gallery in Loxahatchee Groves, Florida.
Bishop's visual impairment gives her art an unmistakable abstract quality. Rather than photographic precision, she focuses on the energy and emotion between horse and rider — often watching her subjects in the ring before ever picking up a brush.
"I look at the energy versus the mechanics — that's what makes my paintings a little different," she says. "My son Colin once said that I paint how I see. He was right!."
Riding Forward
Bishop's resilience is the through line of her story. Even facing progressive vision loss, she continues to ride, compete, and create — finding in each challenge a new doorway.
"Even with the hard things I had to go through," she says, "I don't have any regrets. It was a doom-and-gloom diagnosis, but I'm glad I didn't listen. I would have missed out on a whole lot!"