LAURA DUERWALD

Sojourn 2, 2021
Acrylic, pigment, paper, cold wax on canvas over panel

54w x 24h inches - Unframed
LD 20

Laura Duerwald is a full-time non-objective artist. Her career began as an illustrator and a graphic designer. In 2014, she transitioned from working as a figurative painter using oils, to pursuing abstraction and working with paper, graphite, powdered pigment, and wax. The shift allowed her to push boundaries and work more intuitively and proved to be a more open-ended vehicle for imaginative interpretation. It was also a response to the minimalist art she loves.

Duerwald is inspired by the natural world, but more specifically by the patterns and rhythms she sees in nature. These appear in her art as fragments that embody nature without depicting it. Above all, her painting is about building and compressing a history into a surface. At each stage of the creative process, from the underlying rectangle or grid structure to the finish, and as layers of material are added or subtracted, she embraces happenstance and imperfection. This means letting delicate materials interact in unpredictable ways as they take on the appearance of antique manuscripts or fabrics. In some cases, a final coat of wax is added to give a piece the appearance of being encased, as if in amber. While she makes decisions about how to proceed, her goal is to map the experience of what it means to be still, pay attention, and create objects that resonate with potential meaning.