The three sets of drawings below, Orient, Rome, and Pont Blanc show what a startling effect a change of scene makes in Newman’s work. This is what she writes about them:
“ I think of my paintings as structures rather than pictures of something and like to play with the interaction of disparate mediums and forms. Much of this work is on the hand-made three-ply paper used by miniature painters in India. I tear off shards of paper and fill them in with paint and the torn shapes become sort of a trompe l’oeil collage. They float through a scaffolding of dry-brushed calligraphic ink lines and translucent pours of paint. My work is improvisational and I don’t know where a painting will end up when I start.
I often incorporate things around me. For example, in Port Blanc, I set up a studio in my friends’ garage facing the sea. I had found an image of a Barbie dreamhouse with a sliding board instead of a stairway, and used that as a starting point while also responding to the interweaving of inside and outside in the open Japanese style house and to the scale of the mark of a giant housepainter’s brush I found in the garage. In Rome, ancient walls and torn signs got into the work. “
—CNQ
Group 1: Orient, Long Island, 2024, 22 x 15, acrylic gouache,, acrylic and ink on handmade wasli paper
Group 2: Rome, 2023, 30 x 22, acrylic gouache, acrylic and ink on handmade wasli paper
Group 3: Port Blanc, Brittany, 30 x 22 and 22 x 30, acrylic gouache, acrylic and ink on arches paper.
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See more of Laura Newman’s work here
