Codex 37

LAURA DUERWALD

Codex 37, 2020
Acrylic, pigment, paper, cold wax on canvas over panel

18w x 18h inches - Unframed 
LD 07

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.