Her name is Lissa Pierson, but she signs her name “McGowan.”

She started her career grounded in realism but now dwells in the abstract: colorful, joyful abstract paintings that can now be found, along with the artist, at Lemonade Art Gallery. Pierson joins the founders of Lemonade Art Gallery — Sue Beck, Jerry Bradley, Jan Lamoreaux, Carol Mann and Doris Schneider — in their downtown Washington gallery and studio.

“They are so talented and creative, as well as have this friendly environment. I’m just excited to have studio there. They encourage each other and help each other,” Pierson said. “If I dreamed it up, I couldn’t have come up with a better outcome.”

Pierson recently returned to the area after retiring from 25 years in yacht sales — work that took her across the world. But no matter where she was living, art has always been a constant in her life.

“My art evolved from the time I was a little kid, from 6 years old, probably,” Pierson said. “It was always my favorite thing to do in school.”

At the age of 7, she took her first technical skills class, tagging along with her older sister, encouraged by her parents to continue honing her abilities. It is in their honor that she paints using her maiden name McGowan.

She spent the next several decades soaking in class after class in Rembrandt technique, pointillism, expressionism and portraiture in places she’s lived such as Wilmington, Gulfport, Mississippi and Hawaii.

“Here I am, almost 73, it’s like something I’ve done almost all my life,” Pierson said.

Over the years, both Pierson and her work evolved, from portraits in oil dating back to her teens, to experimenting in different forms, to finally making a break from realism.

“As many portrait classes as I had, I realized that I didn’t really want to do portraits. In doing portraits, you have to please a lot of people,” she laughed. “It wasn’t until about 2006, I had this epiphany: ‘Hey, there’s something more than realism.’”

Pierson was introduced to the work of Paul Jenkins, an abstract expressionist who uses an unusual technique called controlled paint-pouring, along with canvas manipulation, to create his work.

“Suddenly contemporary, abstraction, was what I wanted to do,” Pierson said. “It was more fun. I felt more creative, and I wasn’t looking for something to go by, it was just coming out of my head.”

Pierson refers to painting as a type of meditation and that much of her work contains elements of her time in Hawaii in its light and colors. Her work is not a solitary act, however. She believes the abstract nature of her work lets viewers have an active role in her paintings and allows them to be a part of the creativity.

“I feel like it gives people the opportunity to see what they want to see in it, whereas in realism you’re going to see what you’re intended to see,” she said.

Pierson has been setting up studio space at Lemonade, but will officially be introduced at a reception at the gallery on Jan. 19, from 6-8 p.m.

Lemonade Art Gallery is located at 201 W. Main St. For more information, visit The Lemonade Art Gallery on Facebook or www.lemonadeartgallery.com.