Double Insight
w/ Laura Findlay
Born in Montreal in and raised on Vancouver Island, Laura Findlay received a BFA from Concordia University in 2011 and an MFA from the University of Guelph in 2014. Currently she lives in Toronto, Ontario, and maintains a studio in the Dovercourt neighbourhood.
In an effort to maintain safety measures and ensure physical distancing, we have been visiting our artists in their studios virtually. Double Insight is a new series which offers a glimpse into the artist studio and workplace; the sacred place where creative life and creative process coexist.
Laura’s paintings address personal narratives, ephemerality and are laden with art historical references and nuances. Most recently her work addresses the relationship between destruction and creation through confrontations between naturalism and supernaturalism.
Findlay’s paintings compare our increasingly fragmentary grasp of nature to the psychic fragmentation triggered by her personal loss. She employs the life and landscapes of the natural and often nocturnal underworld to consider the communication and knowledge that emerges in response to histories of trauma, to ask how a destructive event can become a constructive origin.
Through these forms Findlay examines fragmented events involving loss and investigates means of using incomplete information to re-examine historical, cultural, and personal histories.
Employing a myriad of additive and subtractive methods, Findlay produces subjective recounts of real and imagined natural events. Haunting and beautiful images emerge through her strategic layering technique of glazes, paints, washes, solvents and mediums.
In 2017 Findlay was the recipient of the Brucebo Fine Art Scholarship funding a four-month long residency and accompanying exhibition in Gotland, Sweden. She has also participated in independent self-directed residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2016) and the Vermont Studio Center (2011).
In 2021 Laura will be visiting artist in residence at Open Studio Printmaking Centre in Toronto.
For more information on Laura Findlay and the availability of her work, please contact the gallery directly: info@norberghall.com
