Nocturnal Garden

Laura Madera

on view 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 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.

This project was supported by the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.