Lisa Autry painted murals of the four Gospel writers to watch over the tabernacle in the Diocesan Pastoral Center’s chapel. She also stenciled gold designs on the walls and painted other walls to mimic wood grain. (Lisa M. Geraci | Catholic News Herald)
With a paintbrush and a dream
CHARLOTTE — Lisa Autry is quickly becoming the Michelangelo of the Diocese of Charlotte. She has yet to paint the Sistine Chapel, but her depictions fill the ceiling of St. Patrick Cathedral along with its walls and any available space her paintbrush can reach.
Over 14 years, Autry’s art has transformed eight church interiors into a life-sized picturebook full of Biblical scenes and saints.
Autry stays busy. Currently she is repairing 14 Stations of the Cross sculptures for Holy Spirit in Denver and finishing a mural of the Crucifixion for St. Aloysius in Hickory.
Impressed with the portrayal of their patron St. Aloysius and Our Lady of Guadalupe that Autry painted in their speaker box inserts, Father Larry LoMonaco commissioned Autry a second time.
“God has given her a gift that she uses to glorify Him,” Father LoMonaco says. “Lisa can take any concept and make it come alive to enhance any worship space.”
Sporting an “ART4GOD” license plate, the artist began creating religious art in her late 40s. “Sometimes you get to a certain age and your purpose is just laid before you, and you either pick up the palette or you don’t,” she says.
As a child, Autry knelt in a pew at St. Patrick Cathedral in Charlotte, awed by its rib ceiling arches and artwork. She never imagined her older self would scale 50-foot scaffolds with a paintbrush to create her own masterpieces there.
“It was wild when they hired me to do the cathedral,” Autry reflects. “I couldn’t even believe I was there doing it. I actually literally sat in one of those pews at one time in my life and thought,
‘Oh my gosh, I would love to do this.’”
In 2023 the cathedral underwent a $2.6 million renovation, and Autry’s artistry figured prominently. She added artwork on the rib arches and walls, around the treasured stained-glass windows, and in the sanctuary, where images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary are featured on the apse wall.
Although a youthful Autry was captivated by “bells, the smells, and the floating gowns” of the Catholic faith, she was raised a Protestant. She encountered many rosaries and prayers over the years but stubbornly shrugged off the idea of Catholicism, she says.
In 2011, she says, God finally reached her through art. After commissioning her for his own works, a St. Ann parishioner introduced her to their pastor Father Timothy Reid, who needed some stenciling done inside the newly-renovated church. “He took a chance on me,” Autry recalls. “I didn’t have a portfolio and never have done sacred art.”
The successful stenciling work led to more commissions from Father Reid for St. Ann, including applying gold stars to the ceiling, stenciling behind a set of wooden sculptures from Italy, and painting faux marble effect on the altar.
Says Father Reid, “That chapel is really Lisa’s chapel, in a way, because her fingerprints are all over it.”
Although Father Reid and Autry had deep discussions about faith, Autry says she can pinpoint the moment she knew she would become Catholic.
“I was working on one of the statues,” she describes. “Father Reid’s choir, they’re angels; they are not even people. They look like people and sing like angels. And I was just up there, and I don’t know what it was. It was Easter time, and they were singing, and that woman’s voice – it just moved me to tears while I was working. I thought, ‘You know what? He has been directing me here my whole life. He has just been nudging me’.” And that was the instant the painter began her journey to becoming Catholic.
Around that time, Father Reid gave Father Herbert Burke from Immaculate Conception in Forest City a tour of his church.
“Father Burke saw her paintings at St. Ann and Father Reid introduced her to him, and he stole her,” says Immaculate Conception’s Deacon Andy Cilone.
“He started having her do more work than me,” Father Reid jokes.
Father Burke and Autry designed “The Passion of Christ” mural above the altar and signed it with both names. It is one of only a few of Autry’s murals where her signature is clearly visible, and it is significant because it is where she sees the face of God, Autry explains. Over the years, people have shared her deep connection to the painting because of the limited artistic depictions of God the Father.
“People tell me I never knew who I was praying to until I saw your mural, and now I know what God looks like,” Autry says. “I don’t know if that’s what God looks like, but I do know I prayed a whole lot before I picked up that paintbrush. I had to paint Him, but whether or not it looks like Him or not, it was inspired by Him, and that’s who some people pray to. That’s who I pray to.”
Her time at Immaculate Conception was fruitful. Autry and her husband Toby joined OCIA, and Father Burke baptized, confirmed and eventually remarried the couple in the Catholic Church.
From there, her career as a sacred artist progressed as Autry was introduced to more priests – each with their own visions for Autry to translate onto their parish walls.
Father John Putnam, pastor of St. Mark in Huntersville, favors Autry’s stenciling of Mark 16:14-18 around his church’s nave, a reminder of the evangelism each faithful Christian is called to do in the world.
Like Father Reid, Father Putnam also converted to Catholicism.
“Growing up as a Protestant, I was very used to whitewashed churches and very plain worship spaces,” says Father Putnam. “My journey into the Catholic Church was very much influenced by sacred art.”
Autry has a master’s degree in art as well as training around the world, including in Sienna, Italy, where she learned water gilding. But she credits God for her talent. She said the statues she paints seem to come alive and whisper to her.
“Sometimes it is odd. It is, like, I know I can’t do that, I think this is way over my pay scale, but God keeps raising the bar,” Autry laughs. “People ask me, ‘How do I do it?’ I just pick up the brush and load, and God just does it.”
Complications do arise. One of her most recent challenges was readying a statue of Mary, Mother of God, to kick off the diocese’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2022. Father Christopher
Roux rushed the 4-foot statue to her studio after receiving it from Italy. She had six days to repair and repaint it before it began its year-long pilgrimage to 101 locations around the diocese.
“They wanted it done before Easter. I had heaters and dryers everywhere. There were a lot of layers of paint to dry, but she got done,” Autry smiles.
Father Roux appreciates Autry’s work on the statue and inside the cathedral. “She comes from a real understanding of how beautiful art helps to raise our hearts and minds from the things of the world toward the things eternal,” he says.
Autry sometimes receives emails from priests expressing how a piece moved them while at prayer. In these instances, Autry feels her devotion to creating sacred art has purpose and God is guiding her in that work.
She often reflects on the words of Kansas City Chiefs’ football player Harrison Butker: “Of all the people in the world, God picked me to do this; I don’t have a choice.” And she finds joy in knowing God hand-picked her to create beautiful liturgical art throughout the diocese.
— Lisa Geraci. Some photos submitted
Lisa Autry Art projects
- Diocese of Charlotte: Mary, Mother of God statue for 50th anniversary, Pastoral Center altar insert murals, lettering and wood grain
- Holy Spirit, Denver: Stations of the Cross
- Immaculate Conception, Forest City: wall murals above altar and doors, lettering, gold embellishments
- Our Lady of Lourdes, Monroe: murals, lettering, altar insert
- St. Aloysius, Hickory: lettering and speaker box murals of saints
- St. Ann, Charlotte: wall murals, insert murals and stenciling, ceilings, altar
- St. Mark, Huntersville: stenciling, Mary with Child white statue, 3-D Mary with infant
- St. Patrick Cathedral, Charlotte: wall design, gold painting, ceiling stencils
