Born into a family of artists and
academics, Laura Malone grew up in the desert heat of Tucson Arizona. The
physical and psychological dryness of her environment made her want to create
work that is rich and juicy. Like her uncle, the artist Richard Artschwager, she
was first learned to paint from her grandmother, Eugenia, a Ukrainian immigrant
who descended from Russian patrons of the arts. Laura spent her childhood summers in Las
Cruces, New Mexico and slept in Eugenia’s studio, where the scent of oil paint
and turpentine entered her dreams.

As an adult she has supported
herself and her artistic practice by working as a Somatic Therapist where she
helps people to get in touch with their bodies; this work greatly informed her
artistic explorations. Laura Malone lives in Oakland, California with her
husband and two geriatric cats. She exhibits her work throughout the US, and in
online international exhibits.

“My
work investigates the experience of being human – how it feels to be alive and
in a body. I explore the body as both subject and object, to elicit a felt
sense of its interiority and to know its pleasure through the act of
painting. The figures are the object of
a gaze that is tender, occasionally saucy, never distant.

By disrupting the figure, I show how my
experience is shaped by – and shapes – my surroundings and relationships; I and
the world are an interpenetrating, fluctuating pool of subjectivity. Feelings
and meanings spill out into the environment; in turn, the world enters and
remakes me. When figures tangle with each other or the background, it reflects
the way perceptions and interpretations – even the sense of self - keep
shifting. In this way I experience life – and myself - as more of a flux and
flow than a solid thing. Creating a push and pull between narrative and
abstraction I invite the viewer to feel the contraction and release that the
brushstrokes convey, and to participate in the elation I feel when making”.