Artist Statement

In my work, light and dark form abstract environments; Some of them emanate from childhood memories of wide open spaces, rivers, stars at night, celestial bodies in Scientific American magazines; some emanate from a desire to evoke the biological, interior spaces of biological organisms, even perhaps myself.

The use of ink derives from an East Asian tradition, yet I am interested in the ways the genre of ink painting can be expanded to include those of more Western lineage and contemporary perspective.

Some of the works juxtapose rectangles of light and dark delineated by white lines or thin rectangular shapes. These "void" areas serve to create a greater distinction between the shapes and are perhaps the most necessary part of the piece. The "pause" establishes a rhythm in the pieces, a kind of visual silence that still manages to make a sound.

The striated marks contain many meanings for me- they can represent time lapse and the way objects blur when taken over long exposure, particularly moving objects, lights and especially stars- so they come to represent the movement and the passage of time simultaneously; They also are reminiscent of UPC barcodes and how increasingly many more things are being made "trackable" by digital devices. Will the landscapes become "trackable" and completely commoditized if it indeed has not already?
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Laura Lorenz