Lisa Krannichfeld, a Little Rock native, is finishing her second large-scale mural downtown off of Chester and Sixth streets.
She finished a similar mural of five women dressed in bold and bright patterned suits off Main Street in North Little Rock two years ago.
Krannichfeld started painting in high school and quickly made a career out of it after college. She previously taught art classes at the eStem Public Charter School. Now, art is her full-time job.
She has several pieces in the M2 Gallery on South Main Street and one in the new Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
Krannichfeld was the recipient of the Arkansas Arts Center Delta Award in 2018 for her work called "New Skin" made from Chinese ink, watercolor, acrylic, paper collage and toned cyanotype on paper mounted on a board covered with resin.
Her latest mural depicts three women in "powerful and confrontational" stances dressed in multicolored suits.
Krannichfeld said she draws inspiration from body language and wants to paint women in poses that aren't as common.
A man walking by her mural on Friday said he had to stop and thank her for her work because his oldest daughter is a "little artist" herself. Every time they drive by her mural in North Little Rock "she loves it," he said.
"I paint women for that reason, so little girls can see themselves in a different way," Krannichfeld said.
The different colors and patterns are a metaphor for women, she added.
"We're made up of all different kinds of experiences," she said.
Hands are one of her favorite things to draw and in every one of her paintings they are "very expressive," she noted.
"I paint women how I feel women are and how they should be seen more often," she said.
Krannichfeld uses a projector with a sketched drawing to make her art mural size. About two weeks ago, her husband helped her set it up across the street after dark to get started.
"You couldn't free-hand this, especially with the figures, because you'd get all the proportions wrong just looking up at it like this," she explained.
Most of the patterns on the women's suits are stencils that she positions for specific sections of their outfits.
The Little Rock Downtown Partnership grant match program for public art and the property owner, Chuck Hamilton Construction, paid for the installation.
Krannichfeld said Hamilton has collected her art over the years because his sister is her childhood best friend.
"I've known him forever and he's been really supportive of art; it's awesome."