Liana Putrino is a painter based in Austin, Texas, originally from Endicott, New York. She earned her BFA in Studio Art from The University of Texas at Austin, with a concentration in oil painting. Her work explores the intersection of feminism, beauty, and the body, through both floral and figural subjects.
Putrino's floral paintings serve as a visual critique of the societal beauty standards imposed on women—standards that equate youth with value and age with invisibility. Using botanical forms as metaphors for the ways women are perceived, Putrino explores the tension between beauty and impermanence. Like flowers, women are often admired for their external beauty and quickly discarded as they begin to “wilt.”
Her flowers are not simple still lifes—they are symbolic portraits. The subtle curves and folds of petals echo the contours of the body, blurring the lines between the natural world and the feminine form. These compositions often evoke abstracted landscapes—fleshy, blooming, and intimate—where organic shapes suggest hips, torsos, or skin, inviting deeper reflection on how femininity is framed and consumed.
Her detailed observation of organic forms—small imperfections, subtle gradients, layered textures, and delicate transitions—becomes a metaphor for the complexity of womanhood. The bruises, tears, and asymmetries mirror the lived experiences of women and become a way to honor complexity over surface appeal, presence over performance. By capturing flowers at various stages of bloom and decay, she critiques the cultural obsession with youth and visual perfection. Like the women they represent, her flowers are more than ornamental—they are resilient, nuanced, and worthy of sustained attention.
The titles of Putrino’s floral paintings offer a satirical twist, borrowing language from beauty advertisements, self-help mantras, and anti-aging product slogans. By repurposing these phrases, she critiques the relentless messaging directed at women to preserve youth and perfection, exposing the absurdity and pressure embedded in consumer culture’s promises of eternal beauty.
In her figural paintings, Putrino creates intimate, affirming portraits of women in spaces where they feel most at ease—spaces that reflect their inner lives and allow them to exist on their own terms. These environments are not incidental backdrops but extensions of the subject’s identity: rooms, textures, or objects that hold personal meaning and speak to their individual histories, passions, or comforts. The portraits offer a glimpse into private moments of authenticity, where the performative pressures of the outside world are stripped away.
When depicting the full figure, Putrino is especially attentive to the way women inhabit physical space. Each subject is encouraged to pose in a way that feels natural and self-directed, whether expansive or contained. The canvas becomes a kind of symbolic frame—a visual container—not of limitations, but of choice. The space they occupy is not defined by what society has permitted, but by what they choose to claim for themselves. In doing so, these works resist the tradition of the passive, idealized female figure, and instead affirm each woman’s right to presence and autonomy. They are not subjects posed for external validation, but individuals declaring their own sense of worth and humanity, demanding visibility and deserving dignity.
Putrino’s earliest inspiration came from her grandmother, who drew portraits of women she saw on television and in magazines. This act of looking—and making—became an inheritance, passed down not just through technique but through the intention to see women as more than images, as whole people with stories, strength, and voice.
EDUCATION
2012 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Studio Art — The University of Texas, Austin
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2017 EAST Austin Studio Tour, Big Medium — Bolm Studios, Austin, TX
2017 ACC Art Majors Exhibition — Daugherty Arts Center, Austin, TX
2012 Ornamentation in Italian Art, Learning Tuscany — Santa Chiara Study Center, Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy
2009 UT Painting I Student Exhibition — Parkside, Austin, TX
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
© Liana Putrino. All rights reserved.
All artwork, images, text, and content on this website are the property of Liana Putrino and are protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. No part of this site may be reproduced, copied, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means—digital, mechanical, or otherwise—without prior written permission from the artist.
For licensing, usage inquiries, or permissions, please contact the artist.