Laura Madera
Nocturnal Garden
March 12, 2022 - June 19, 2022
Laura Madera’s Nocturnal Garden brings together a body of paintings in a luminous symphony, offering new ways of noticing the ephemeral coming together of light and air amplified on botanical silhouettes. Plants are made mostly of three elements: carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. These have been pulled from the air and water as the body of the plant breathes and drinks, a temporary manifestation connecting the below to the above.
Straddling seemingly oppositional dualities, these works are enduring yet soluble; delicate yet bold; intimate and quiet, yet compelling. Madera operates within the interstitial connective tissues, bringing nourishment to the cellular structures of her paintings, listening carefully for what each needs. She has learned to let herself work slowly, carefully, in a studio full of in-progress paintings. The work is incremental. It is like gardening. In this practice, she visits, listens, watches. On any given day, she may make only two moves on each surface. She treats each piece as a bed of rich soil, tending the budding emergence of glowing fields that might bring forth memories of moonlit walks, eyes open to wonderment. Hers is a meditative practice of generous acceptance, kind to one’s own bodily and spiritual rhythms, open to what might come next, whether it is rest or a watershed of production. There is tenderness here. And joy.
Laura Madera
“I use painting to poetically explore the natural world, it’s primal energies, and to approximate something of the wonder of it. I think about this subjective investigation in relation to the multiplicity of places surrounding me but also to the world within.
A painting, or series of paintings, begins with asking questions.
The painting that follows is the result of negotiating, probing, and conversing within a process of making. For me this is an unpredictable shifting process of understanding and coming-into-being that can only be arrived at through a physical engagement with materials and landscape.”
Laura Madera received her BFA from Emily Carr University, BC, and an MFA from the University of Guelph, ON. Her practice explores the potential of watercolour as a means to poetically investigate phenomena within a contemporary context. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Far x Wide in New York, NY, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG) in Oshawa ON, Monastiraki in Montreal, QC, and is held in private collections across Canada, the United States and Mexico. She was named as one of Canada’s most promising emerging painters by the Magenta Foundation. Currently, she is a recipient of an Artist Production grant from the Ontario Arts Council. Her studio is located in Peterborough on the Treaty 20 and traditional territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabeg.
“Images for my paintings stem from direct experience of my regional practice in Peterborough Ontario. Content is something previously seen, thought, felt, dreamed of, which is then reconstructed or reimagined through my studio processes. My desire for these images to become paintings develops over time, slowly. Out of a need to explore the edges and dimensions of the subject and feeling – a way to grasp in paint the seemingly ungraspable.
Using the medium of watercolour, I am interested in innovating contemporary Canadian painting. I routinely challenge common assumptions of watercolour and its genres. For instance, I shift dainty botanical watercolour into the scale of a three-story sixty-foot public art installation. I use uncommon methods and materials such as latex in the creation of my watercolours as a means to make, preserve, protect and ultimately reveal light. I have developed a unique fresco surface that allows me to paint watercolour directly on panel and exhibit them without glass – foregrounding their intense atmospheric and evocative properties. My work is exhibited nationally and internationally in both public and private galleries. Most recently, in “Willing the Season” a virtual exhibition in New York City organized by Far x Wide.” – Laura Madera
This project was supported by the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
More Exhibitions With Laura Madera
It’s All About ART: Preview Exhibition
Oct. 5, 2024 - Oct. 20, 2024
It’s All About ART: Preview Exhibition
Oct. 6, 2023 - Oct. 22, 2023
It’s All About ART Online Auction Preview
Oct. 8, 2022 - Nov. 6, 2022
Nocturnal Garden
Mar. 12, 2022 - Jun. 19, 2022
It’s All About ART Online Auction Preview
Oct. 21, 2021 - Nov. 21, 2021
It’s All About ARTISTS Preview Exhibition
Oct. 8, 2020 - Nov. 8, 2020
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