ARTIST STATEMENT
My soulful appreciation for the past resonates in my studio practice and ultimately in my paintings. I create abundant, abstract, textural works inspired by the interaction of culture, history, architecture, artifact, travel, and nature. Transformation is an inherently inspiring source for story-telling. The breakdown of architecture and place, the evolution of culture, the way water flows through the earth inspire me to capture their essences and create art somewhere between representational and abstract.
With paint and encaustic mediums I explore watering down, thickening up or suspending to ‘disturb’ layers or elements that explore a sense of time, memory, and place. I appropriate and evolve visual symbols, such the African Sankofa to invite lyrical and meaningful ways of expressing life.
The Japanese notion of Wabisabi, embodies the appreciation of honoring that which is broken, and acknowledging time worn surfaces and beauty in imperfection. This concept is key to my practice. My art is the product conveyed by years of observing.
My quiet dedication to the exploration of techniques that express my view is tireless.
MORE ABOUT LORRAINE
By Dewitt Cheng Art Writer, and Curator.
"The Bay Area artist Lorraine Lawson, whose rather more ‘kempt’ studio sits on a leafy street in a semi-industrial part of Campbell, in Silicon Valley, creates abstract paintings that prioritize creative self-expression. Combining the gestural calligraphy of traditional Asian painting, as well as Abstract Expressionism; rich, saturated color palettes that often evoke the California landscape; and collaged elements scavenged from various sources, Lawson’s paintings are indisputably personal—one of her collectors declared, 'I see your hand in every piece you do'—despite the influence of 'the great' e.g., painters like Mark Tobey, Richard Diebenkorn and Robert Rauschenberg.
Combining the spirituality and even the poetic/literary quality of Asian calligraphy with the collage aesthetic of Western modernism, Lawson’s paintings capture the welter and confusion of contemporary life while reaffirming its ambiguous and fugitive beauty—fugitive, that is, except through art."