Lisel Salzer is a Vienna-born artist who was part of the Zinkenbacher Artist Colony in St. Gilgen in the 20s and 30s. She arrived in New York City in 1939 and now lives and works in Seattle, Washington.

She particularly specializes in portraits using all art mediums--watercolor, oil paint, pastels, drawing and Limoges enamel.

While visiting the Metropolitan Museum in New York, she first saw an enamel--a portrait of King Francis I--by the 16th century French artist Leonardo Limousin. Impressed by the portrait and by its jewel-like quality, she inquired about the technique and was told it was a forgotten process--a lost art.

Together with her late husband, she did a lot of research and experiments. After two years she was able to do portraits in fused glass on copper and, for her the Limoges enamel technique was alive again! Two years later, she was awarded a national prize in an exhibit at the Syracuse Museum in Syracuse, New York. She has made countless portraits in both eastern and western United States.

In 2003 she was given the Cross of Merit in Gold, an award from the Austrian government, for her lifetime devotion and contribution to the arts. She donated numerous paintings and graphics to the new art museum in St. Gilgen which specializes in the art of the Zinkenbacher Artist Colony group. 

She has written a booklet about the technique and made a 45-minute color videotape, too. The video shows all the steps of making a portrait in enamel. In 1996, she produced a boxed portfolio of 32 color reproductions, limited to 500. In 2004, she produced a document of the award ceremony for her medal. Both her videos are available to the public, and the transcript for her Limoges Enamel video is online.

The video on Limoges Enamel, available to the public.
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