Lisa Edelstein has been mining for images inspired by her own Jewish diasporic family history, transforming disregarded or even discarded snapshots into colorful paintings of a fading past. Largely unposed, caught off-guard, and implying action on either side of the frozen moment, her compositions seek to connect her interest in storytelling across the various avenues of her artistic practice—painting, writing, and acting. Intimate and contemplative, her work endeavors to transport the viewer into the jumble of personalities and physical spaces that bring any family to life. Though told through the lens of her own Jewish family culture, it’s through specificity that she finds universality.

In her painting practice, she is particularly interested in the tension between presence and disappearance. Working from small, often damaged photographs, she enlarges and reinterprets them, allowing color, gesture, and painterly surface to carry emotional weight where detail has faded. The brushstroke becomes an act of preservation as much as invention. She is not simply replicating an image, but reanimating it—restoring atmosphere, complexity, and interiority to figures who might otherwise be forgotten. The scale shift from snapshot to painting asks the viewer to slow down and reconsider what might have once seemed incidental. As her work expands and evolves, she continues to deepen her understanding of the way memories are preserved and how culture and ritual binds us through time.

Edelstein studied experimental theatre at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts before leaving to work as an actress, writer, filmmaker, and eventually expanding her practice to painting. Her work has been exhibited at Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles; Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles; A Hug From the Art World, New York; SFA, New York, Gavlak Gallery, New York; and VSG, Chicago. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA. Edelstein lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is represented by Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles.

Upcoming shows include a two person exhibition with her husband, artist Robert Russell, at The Skirball Museum, Los Angeles, May 2026.