Lawren Rich | Featured Artist

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Lawren Rich, "Barn and Furrow"

acrylic on canvas, 33" x 33". Courtesy of the gallery.

Living and working on the Canadian prairies I’ve always been profoundly influenced by the contrast between the concentrated energy of the city I grew up in, and the vast spaces beyond. Out of this contrast evolved a variety of simple themes exploring large vs small, tight vs open, built vs grown.

As a structured contemporary painter who explores abstractions, I still like my work to feel accessible. In my prairie abstract series for example, I prefer to exude quiet comfort, rather than capturing every detail of a classic rural scene. The cityscapes, I’d rather highlight structures like a bridge, capturing raw decayed beauty rather than a clean streetscape and a location. To me it seems more natural and ‘living’.

Having spent several years in a rural community, I was influenced by the natural structures, lake prairie environment and animals I found around my home and on my many bike rides producing the rural based pieces of this period.

Now back living in Winnipeg, I still remain open to these natural influences and I will often jump back and forth between themes and projects enjoying the cross-pollination between them. They have begun to merge along similar lines of application, colour, mood and feel so I become very excited about where these might go in the future.

Currently, I’m leaning more towards neutrality and minimalism, a more limited palette, and trying to break up the clean colour. It’s the mood I want to capture... maybe more distant like an older photo or distant hazy memory containing an inner light. I employ multimedia applications such as metal leafing taking the work beyond the confines of painting and more into the layered “building” of a piece. I enjoy layering abstractions into scenic work to explore contrast between real and imaginary maybe creating a “window” through the real world for perhaps a view into something else.

Accepting the nature of evolution and impermanence, I continue to rework, recycle or retire pieces that are no longer reflective of where I am currently. I consider pieces unfinished until they leave the studio remaining ‘open’ for further work.