In the Paint / Oil on linen / 40” x 36” / 2022

A painting can sly, quixotic, cheeky or stand-offish. This one? It reminds us we’re snooping.

LWC: For years, Laura Malone painted in obscurity. I think the threat of not being seen became scarier than the fear she wouldn’t be understood. And I believe she felt some of that same ambivalence with me, as she invited me into her studio. In the end, it felt urgent to channel that into the work. It was the spring of 2022 and it felt significant to socialize again, especially with strangers.

The window through which the viewer sees her is pitched hot; the space inside, much cooler, sits in opposition, like a bubble around her. For a lot of artists, their work is a more vulnerable and honest portrayal of them than a photograph or simple conversation. The colors in the painting, shifted from any sense of reality - for me - indicate the disjunct between what we see and a psychological reality of how we come to know someone.

For Laura, in particular, I felt that my understanding of her came through her work. And so, when it came to making the marks that represent the table, where her supplies sit, I pushed them into abstract forms, as if part of a paint palette themselves and from there they spiral out to form the subject’s world. I deliberately neglected her face.