Artist’s light touch brings art to life

Published 10:09 am Monday, February 23, 2026

Lisa Reinauer, a retired McNeese State University professor of art for 32 years, presents a solo exhibit “A Certain Slant of Light” at Historic City Hall on display until April 4.

The exhibition features more than 30 acrylic-on-panel paintings that explore subjects from the artist’s immediate surroundings with an emphasis on natural and artificial light.

“Painting is really all about light,” Reinauer said. “While my work ranges from still-life to landscape to interiors; it is all based on a love for painting nature, color and light.”

Reinauer said she started painting with her grandmother at a young age and that’s how her love for art began. She remembers spending time at her grandma’s house.

“Every summer I would go and spend a little time at her house and she would paint with me, and that’s how it started,” Reinauer said. “And I remember my parents nurturing my love for art before I even started school.”

She said she was originally trained in oil, but when she became a mother, she switched from oil to acrylic because of the ventilation and chemicals. Most of her paintings today are acrylic, but for some, she places an oil glazing on top of acrylic.

“I’ve been trying to make acrylic behave like oil ever since — that’s my constant battle but it’s a fun battle to get the same luminosity that you do with oil with acrylic,” she said.

Reinauer enjoys drawing and painting because, she said, especially in painting, you can show color and light so wonderfully. She enjoys impressionism art because it’s all about capturing the sense of light and time of day. She also enjoys realism art and was influenced by Edward Hopper, a realism artist.

“(Hopper) would always capture certain times of the day and light in his work and in my very first painting class we had to pick a masters study and paint ourselves in that master study and I chose Edward Hopper,” she said.

Once Reinauer retired, she began doing smaller paintings and posting them on her social media pages. She was approached by Carol Ann Gayle, an exhibit and programming specialist, about a year ago to see if she would want to present a solo exhibit at Historic City Hall. The last time her work was on display was in 2011 for another solo exhibit and the theme was “As Far as the Eye Can See.” The paintings were all panoramic views of downtown Lake Charles.

“It’s always fun to have something to look forward to and paint for, and I paint everyday so it’s nice to focus on something and it’s fun to see them all at once because at home you can’t really put up 30 pieces at a time to see it as a group all displayed,” she said.

The theme for this exhibit is “A Certain Slant of Light,” and she said she came up with this theme after hearing an artist speak about how noticing a certain slant of light strikes a service is their favorite thing to do, and that’s exactly how Reinauer said she feels about art.

“Paintings are all about light,” she said, “and to me it doesn’t matter as much of what the subject matter is so much as much as how the light is hitting it — anything can be really interesting and beautiful.”

One piece in her exhibit is titled “Tapestry,” the lone piece in the exhibit that is not for sale because it’s a painting of her mother-in- law’s kitchen. Reinauer said while it is a painting of her kitchen it’s also, in a sense, a painting of her mother-in-law. She said while it’s a painting of an interior image it’s also a reflection of the people who live there as well.

“It is an image of everything she’s collected, with her gardening shirt hanging on the back of her chair and some pears on the kitchen table,” she said. “And I see all these memories that are represented through the objects that are there.”

Reinauer said she hopes when people visit the exhibit and view her pieces, it reminds them to slow down and look around them at the art all around you.

“We pass by things everyday that are ordinary and we don’t always appreciate them and they’re right in front of us,” she said. “Start looking at things. Sometimes we go so fast and we’re on our phones and we’re doing all these other things and we’re distracted and we don’t take the time to look at what’s around us and enjoy those things.”