Laura Sanders’ love of the environment manifests itself through her paintings.
Though she paints the human form, each of her subjects is intimately linked to his or her surroundings. Through her art, she explores the relationship between human and habitat.
“My figures are embedded in the landscape,” Sanders says.
Sanders uses a wet-on-wet technique, applying oil paint on wet layers to blend strokes and colors together. While reproductions of her work can appear almost photorealistic, her originals show the brush strokes, which can be heavily applied in some areas.
“When I’m painting, I’m thinking of it almost sculpturally,” she says.
Sanders uses the layering of brush strokes to portray light and form in a visceral way. The technique allows her to create a flowing sort of effect. Her paintings can take anywhere from one to three months to complete.
She’ll typically have something in mind she’s trying to capture. After a lengthy photography session with her models, Sanders returns to her studio. The photography allows her to capture a moment in time with just the right kind of light. Her paintings become a combination of feelings about the photography session and the images she returns with.
Lately, Sanders has been taken with juxtaposing unnatural objects and the natural environment. Her work has included models with plastic water bottles and large, fluorescent pink flotation devices. With the water bottles, especially, she likes the action of consuming that her paintings evoke.
Visually, she says, the bottles are interesting to paint, especially with the light concentrated through the plastic. On another level, though, she enjoys thinking about how objects so commonplace can have such a major effect on the environment, even though they quickly disappear from view.
“I’m giving them a longer life,” she says.
She typically uses family members as her subjects. She began by photographing her daughter and her friends. As a mother, she was interested in the vulnerability of the young children in the environment. As her daughter has grown, Sanders has kept photographing her and her friends. Some of her models have been featured in her photography and paintings for a decade or more.
Sanders’ enchantment with the environment came to her at an early age. Though she was born in Detroit, she spent her childhood in Dayton. She was about 7 years old when her family moved to a house right at the edge of a new suburban housing development.
Looking out her window, she spotted a farmhouse. In the way that only a young child can, she began forming plans for exploration. But one mor
ning, she woke up and the farmhouse was gone.
The housing development took over the farmland and the trees, and Sanders witnessed the changing landscape and the resulting disappearance of her playground.
Sanders had a more positive experience with nature while visiting her grandparents, who lived near a river in the Michigan wilderness. The river was as wide as a two-lane city road and ran straight through the forest. Though Sanders had siblings, most of her fond memories of that time are of her alone, exploring. Each summer, she would spend her days there riding her bike in the woods.
“It made a huge impression on me,” Sanders says.
Sanders’ love of art can also be traced back to her childhood. When she was in junior high school, she had a teacher who worked closely with her and inspired her to continue pursuing her artistic interests. Art felt natural to her.
At the Columbus College of Art and Design, she spent a good deal of time pursuing a dual major of ceramics and painting, though she always leaned toward painting.
“It was hard to choose sometimes,” she says.
Sanders ultimately graduated from CCAD with a bachelor of fine arts degree. Her work has been featured in public collections including the Columbus Museum of Art, the Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery and the Pizzuti Collection.
She’s won a handful of awards, including, most recently, the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in 2013. That same year, she had her artwork featured on the 2013 Pizzuti mug. She has also contributed work for Pizzuti’s Ohio Portfolio, which will be featured in the Pizzuti hotel building, the Joseph, in the Short North.
Sarah Sole is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
