Laura Sanders

The girls in my paintings are an uneasy mix of potential victim, pernicious consumer and reminiscences of the traditional feminine personification of nature. Joining the genres of landscape and figurative painting and I see the figure as both natural and invasive to the landscape. The human body, defined and distorted by sun, water, firelight and the surrounding environment, coexists with the glare of manmade materials littering the natural world. My work considers the reciprocal nature of our relationship to the environment. We are shaped by it and as we change the environment we change ourselves. 

In my oil paintings I paint directly, wet on wet, using the materiality of the paint to sculpt flesh and bones, flora and fauna. There is a depth and variety of paint application from the thin glaze to the impasto. I want to construct a visceral experience that feels empirical and goes beyond the descriptive to explore the physicality of the paint.