It’s an overused word, but clear your mind for a minute and believe us when we say that Laura Lasworth’s paintings are haunting. In its original usage “haunt” meant to habitually frequent a place and that’s what Lasworth’s canvases do: linger in our minds, in that border country between dreaming and waking life, between faith and reason, between narrative and abstraction. While many of her works emerge out of her profound grappling with literary texts, she never becomes a mere illustrator: always there is a transformation of the text so that the painting acts like a text, yet in its own visual medium. To see one of her paintings based on Flannery O’Connor’s stories, for example, is to sense the writer provoking the artist to new acts of creation. Pain, alienation, and loneliness inhabit these works, but so do light, grace, and benediction.
Natural and Grafted Branches.
When Lasworth arrived at Seattle Pacific University, Image’s host institution, to take up a position in the art department in 2002, we were thrilled. The community here has been greatly enriched by her presence.
Some of Lasworth’s work is featured in Image issue 17.
Biography
Laura Lasworth was born in Chicago, IL and received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Chicago. She decided to head west in search of her Masters Degree, and moved to California to accomplish her studies, which lead to a Master’s of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA. After receiving her degree, she was invited to join the faculty of California State University-Northridge. After ten years in Northrigdge, Lasworth taught art at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA and Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA. Lasworth has had the opportunity to exhibit her work within group exhibitions on numerous occasions and has held nine solo shows within the last 20 years. Many of these exhibitions took place in California where she lived until just recently. Lasworth currently lives in northwest Washington state and is on the art faculty at Seattle Pacific University.
Trained Stag.
For the L.A. Post Cool show, Lasworth contributed her piece, “St. Therese Pray for Us.”
Of this show curator and writer for the L.A. Times and Art in America, Michael Duncan called an “open-ended spitual allegory…that addresses traditional religious themes through unexpected symbols and narratives.”
Lasworth’s most recent solo show was held at Hunsaker/Schlesinger Gallery and exhibited paintings of the biblical text, The Song of Songs. Art in America reviewed the show in December of 2001 and called her a “literary painter of rare quality whose works are informed by texts but never burdened by them.” By depicting this “highly erotic” text, Lasworth was able to showcase her talent of being able to “cut through the academic discouse to do what the song itself does so vividly—create images of intense sensual reverie.”
Current Projects
November 2003
I am just beginning a new body of work inspired by my move to Seattle. I am developing compositions for a suite approximately twenty small paintings which will be created with a color pallet influenced by the sky and landscape of my new home, the Pacific Northwest. The completed body of works is scheduled to be exhibited at Hunsaker/Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA in November of 2004. I also have been a part of the traveling exhibition titled L.A. Post Cool. It was previously on view at the San Jose Museum of Art and traveled to Los Angeles, CA in March of this year and ran until the end of August. The show focused on L.A. painters and sculptors who have departed from the detached, ironic, and cynical views of their peers and shifted to creating more personal and emotional works.