with the weight of gravity, 2024
oil on panel
48 x 36 inches
to put hands and hearts in the dirt, 2023
oil on panel
48 x 36 inches
under the canopy, 2023
oil on panel
48 x 36 inches
lean into me, 2023
oil on panel
40 x 60 inches, diptych
The Exhibition, Spring Fever
Magnolia Laurie’s creative practice is centered in the field of painting and builds on the traditions of landscape painting to create visual haikus and allegories about our complex relationships to the land. Laurie pulls ideas from various fields like climate science, geology, biology, gardening, and landscape preservation to create new relationships and recontextualize them through a framework of "landscape."
These paintings are immersive, saturated, and assertive in their colors. Within them, Laurie seeks out the sublime in growth that is persistent, invasive, determined, abundant, and lush. Her references range from gardens and public parks to vacant lots and rewilded nature preserves. She looks for hope, humor, and beauty in moments of tenacious growth and endurance.
These works start with vibrant neon underpaintings and then build up through layers of mark and gesture, steadily accumulating density. The paintings grow, and the compositions shift, but evidence of that vibrant underpainting persistently endures, pushing its way up through the accumulated layers, much like the weeds that make their way through our sidewalks and mulched flower beds. Relationships of pattern, symmetry, and asymmetry are used to explore ideas of control and cultivation versus chaos and invasiveness in the landscape.
The Artist
Born in Hyannis, MA and raised in Puerto Rico, Magnolia Laurie currently lives and works in Baltimore, MD. Laurie received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, her P.B.A. from San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA and her M.F.A. from Mount Royal School of Art, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD. She is an associate professor and Chair of the Visual Arts Department at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA.
Laurie’s work has been exhibited at the Phillips Museum of Art, PA, the Hamiltonian Gallery, Washington, DC, the Kemper Art Museum, MO, MONO Practice, MD, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD. Her works have been supported with grants from the Creative Baltimore Fund, the Maryland State Arts Council Grants, the Belle Foundation, and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. She has been awarded residencies across the United States including at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, VA, the Vermont Studio Center, VT, and the Jentel Foundation, WY.
Website: www.magnolialaurie.com
Instagram: @magnolialaurie_studio
A special thank you to EDENS for making this space available.
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