Laura Watt
Download CV below.
Artist Statement:
My work explores the possibilities of abstract content as found in pattern and color. Pattern and color are ways to address the modernist endgame that painting still finds itself playing, while simultaneously speaking of a much larger and more diverse group of art and craft forms. Pattern and color are old strategies of knowledge; Arabic tiles, Buddhist mandalas, Pygmy bark cloths, Amish quilts and Scottish tartans are just a few examples that transcend the merely decorative, and contain cultural stories.
The paintings refract these wide influences, making something that looks like something and nothing at all. The work heralds the endgame of painting and its reductionist tendency while creating a space of transformation that acknowledges the human love of simile and metaphor.
A painting is a transcendental experience. Repetition and pattern are a means of transforming. Metaphoric and suggestive, pattern is a reminder of the infinite. Color is delirious and calls up both rapture and despair.
The permutations of a painted surface are endless. Pattern is form and decoration is not an afterthought. I embellish so that some can wish for austerity. Color is often feared. We like linear theory and color analogies simple – like a flag.
A painting is an altered state. To give yourself over to looking is to enter that altered state. A painting should not contain itself. A painting should open like a house of mirrors at the traveling fair.