>> Artist Ellen Starr Lyon has put a twist on an old writer's maxim.

Instead of write what you know, it's paint what you know.

>> Right now, I am focusing on the figure and specifically portraits.

I have been focusing on my family for the most part.

>> These bold, luminescent works often feature the expressive faces and lively gestures of herself and her family members.

>> Working on my skill and getting back to the figure has coincided with my kids moving into these teenage years.

You know, their emotions are off the charts, and they express them in a way that adults do not.

To have these live models who are around me and emoting extravagantly, and I can capture that, that has been really exciting, and I think that has really pushed my practice.

>> As a busy working mother, practice wasn't always easy to come by.

She had to find a balance between art, work, and life.

>> How do you do a job, be a mother, and still have a studio practice?

>> One of the ways she made it all work was to set up her studio in her home.

>> It has worked really well for me to get back to my studio practice of doing a few hours at a time, to have it right here.

I will come back from work, and I will come to the studio, and I will put a couple hours in before dinner.

And I'm very grateful that I have a spouse who takes care of the cooking so I don't have to worry about it.

It's one of those practical details that you don't hear artists talk a lot about.

It's, like, how do you make this work?

How do you find that balance?

It was also important for -- for me to have my kids see me put real time and energy into something that I love, and see that, you know, mom still works because there's a reality of paying the bills, but this is something really important to her, and she's still putting that time in.

>> It's from this rambling dining room turned studio, itself a work of art, that she puts in the time and energy to craft ethereal, light-drenched images snatched from her own experiences.

>> I work from my own photography.

So when I'm doing my setups and doing my photography, for me it feels a lot like preparatory sketches.

I want to capture something vulnerable, whether it's a self-portrait, which I do quite a bit of, just because I know myself and my expressions so well.

I can capture an idea and use my own face.

>> Lately, she has been creating self-portraits of another kind.

These compositional pieces, arranged by the artist, have a dense narrative quality.

>> How do you build a narrative with still life objects?

Not only are these all, like, living things, living plants, they're plants that I've grown.

So they -- it all feels like just an extension of myself.

So even if some of them won't have a self-portrait that you can see, a face, it is still this is me.

This is how I see.

This is how I live.

And I do that all around my home.

I'm constantly, like, moving furniture, moving plants, moving little glass things with water and marbles for the light to pass through.

So it's -- it's just a part of being who I am.

>> And if the subjects of her work are often the people and things around her, it's how they interact with light that shows off a keen eye and a skilled brush.

>> I'm just fascinated by the play of light over surface.

So light and shadow.

The effects that you can get from natural light, you cannot get elsewhere.

Because it's coming around things, and it's modulating, and you see a lot of reflected light.

So that gives your eye this idea of space.

With this particular painting, I did several washes in lights and darks because I really needed to get my head around where that light was passing through before I started to add a lot of color.

Like, for this glass float, it, itself, is transparent and it's green, and what are you seeing through it?

The color changes.

It blurs the lines.

So thinking forwards and backwards to get to accomplish what you want to accomplish.

>> To be as accomplished as Lyon is no simple matter.

It takes time, dedication, and focus.

>> It's just not you feel struck with inspiration and you run to the studio and you create one -- no, no, no.

In my experience, at least, there's a lot of hard work and time spent.

And so when I finally was just honest about what could my schedule tolerate, what would give me time in the studio, what would give me still family time and time for everything, because it -- if you don't find that balance, you will not have a studio practice that endures.

>> For Lyon, it's that balance that makes her paintings special, bringing her studio into her home, and her family into the work makes for striking and intimate images that hit close to home.