You say, “Hello” and I say, “How are you?” And then you “confess” to a terrible morning and we feel better that we got past “pleasantries.” But we didn’t talk about what caused you to get up this morning, forego more lucrative work and more pleasurable leisure to MAKE something.

Laura Winn Clark’s realistic oil paintings feature fellow artists in the creative act; they reveal the unseen: the psychological realities, the social relationships and struggles that impact their work. For some, there is a problem of physical space; for others, the problem is space in their day or mental space. Creation requires an effort to push back on responsibilities - family, work, norms – and to claim space for themselves. The paintings are about how the intrinsic motivations of an individual meet extrinsic pressures, inviting a dialogue about individual agency and social reality.

Entering each subject’s world through conversation, documentation and reflection, the process of painting becomes an opportunity to ask meaningful questions and unearth esoteric wisdom. Slow thinking and uncertainty are important. The themes are existential: commitment/shirking, isolation/connection, the tame and the feral. The specificity of each story motivates bold color and compositional juxtapositions. Some paintings, in their intimate scale, beckon the viewer close; others invite the viewer to become part of the painting and grapple with their complicity in the social order.

In another series, Clark renders urban backyards, where all – from the walls and patios to the trees and plants – are the result of generations of careful toil. Fascinated by the investment in these spaces and the complexities of how these spaces operate, the implicit subjects are the women who construct and curate them, the time they devote to it and the parallel care she takes in mythologizing their Sisyphean efforts.

Background

Laura Winn Clark is an American artist living and working in New York City. She received her BA from Princeton University in Architecture and Urban Planning, with her thesis assessing how artists and architects utilize light to manipulate space and circulation. She worked as a documentary field producer, was an artist in residence at Kunstraum, LLC in Brooklyn, NY and is a 2022 Mother Art Prize finalist.