About Me
I had a passion for creating art my whole life, but then life got in the way.
When I graduated high school in 1998, I so desperately wanted to be an Artist, but I didn’t have the luxury to choose pipedreams. Despite a brief stint attending Art & Design at college when I was 19 years old, Art was relegated mostly to hobby status outside of a “real” job & by 2007 doing art had slipped off my radar, almost entirely.
In the thick of getting on with my safe, predictable life, I often felt I was walking further & further from my dreams. I didn't realise every step was leading me back straight back to them, with greater strength & determination than ever before.
In 2019, after 12 years away from creating art, I found myself picking up the brushes again. At first, I was just going along to some creative workshops & painting under instruction, but before long my passion was reignited & I was setting up a little paint space at home. This is what had been missing in my life & this is what I needed to create for myself amongst the demands of motherhood, so I could function better, not only as a mother, but as a human in general.
The 12-year break divided my body of work into distinctly different subject preferences & styles. In my youth, the stories my art told were often quite literal in translation, featured a lot of female figures & were predominantly based in in the emotions I struggled with. But as a mature aged artist with lived experiences & gained wisdom, my art has become much more intuitive & joyful, covering a range of emotions, experiences & subjects.
Most of my more current art is recognisable by a myriad of layers & colours, in what is easiest to describe as a “more is more” aesthetic. Contrasting controlled & uncontrolled elements is how I express the internal battles, & noise, but also the magic I experience in my overactive imagination, which comes from living with my neurodiversity.
My art now comes from a place of knowing that it doesn’t have to always be so literal or shrouded in dark palettes & innuendo to explain a story, a struggle, a journey or complexity. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t had a deep, heart aching cry over some of the happiest, pinkest, glitter covered, kitschiest pieces of art I’ve made, because even they hold some of my most difficult stories. As early as my teens, my work had always been an extremely visceral experience & therefore each layer in my work represents the energy I experienced in that moment of its creation. The stories of my life are buried deep in those layers & that is why I am so honoured when people connect so deeply with it. The common thread throughout my art has always been transference.
I jokingly describe my quite intuitive art process as bin fire’esque, but it all somehow comes together to create a harmonious & evocative balance of chaos & calm that all makes sense in the end. It is ironic how taking a biopsy of my hyperactive mind & slapping it on a canvas, simultaneously gives me a deep sense of calm. Without art my mind would surely rip its pants off & run for the hills, leaving a trail of chaos behind it.
It is this experience of the therapeutic benefits of creating my own that ultimately drove me back to my art practice & motivates me to share it with the world. It is seeing people relate to my stories & experiences or ultimately feel inspired & connected to what I have created, that fuels me to continue coming back. Knowing that I get to wake up every day & be the artist I always wanted to be & showing my children they can follow their hearts desires is about the best legacy I think I can leave in this world. So, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here to see it.
Big Love,
Lauren x