LAURA FISHMAN: HIGH VISCOSITY

DegreeArt are delighted to announce Laura Fishman’s inaugural solo exhibition and residency ‘High Viscosity’.

Viscosity describes a fluid's resistance to flow, in this case, paint.

Laura’s artistic vision is to connect with the viewer through the language of colour and paint, and to convey her experiences. Her abstract canvases use glaze painting techniques, dripped and poured - full of energy and glowing with colour. With a deeply intuitive approach, opaque and translucent layers of paint are worked until the results produce surfaces that are beautifully textured, sublimely multicoloured and visually engaging.

During the residency at DegreeArt Laura will transform the gallery space with three dimensional paintings, installation, video and sculpture. The exhibition will link the various surfaces and features, both literally and figuratively, creating a dynamic relationship with the viewer. Emphasis will be put on the work's physicality and materiality, and the process of allowing the materials to find their own form and the creative possibilities.

Laura will also be collaborating with a designer Dervin Batarlo to produce a hybrid fashion piece that will hang from the ceiling. The residency will also feature a HD Video, directed by Amnon Ron, which will present a microscopic scene, revealing a close up of the impact of raw materials on liquids in various viscosities. The resulting images present a gripping, vivid world, which the human eye cannot normally see, and can only define as abstract.

Laura graduated from the State University of New York with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (cum laude) in Painting, where she studied figurative and abstract painting. She continued her studies in textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and earned her MA Fine Art at Middlesex University in London. Laura is founder of Creative Drawing Studio in North London and a certified GOLDEN Artist Educator.

For Laura's series of ‘Pour Paintings’, she explores how gravity pulls highly viscous paint. The process takes hours to form and days to dry. She uses a bold, playful palette that can trickle off, through, or be completely free from the support (often using a wooden painting panel). Laura intentionally allows the paint to flow off the support, adding a playfulness to her work as she questions the notion of painting. Balancing experience along with discovery and chance, tension lies in the controlled gesture. As the colours swirl and mingle, the movement creates designs evocative of the intricate patterns of nature.

In her ‘Paint Objects’, Laura further investigates the plasticity of the paint. She moves away from working with two-dimensional surfaces and toward working with literal space, constructing works that overlap the two media of painting and sculpture. She combines systems of accumulation and layering using unique paint technology to explore how paint behaves and develops over time. Consequently, the viewer experiences a sense of time and process, an index of days and experience.

All of these techniques will be employed and demonstrated during her residency and Laura will also be offering workshops which will include, ‘Intuitive Painting/Action Painting’ and ‘Colour Mixing Workshop’.

WHEN: 28^th October - 16th December 2013 Open daily 12-6 pm

First Thursdays: 7^th November & 5^th December 2013 6-9pm

Workshops: ‘Intuitive Painting/Action Painting’: Saturday 9^th November 2013 1-4pm

‘Colour Mixing Workshop’: Saturday 7 December 2013 1-4pm

NOTES:

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS - VIDEO -

Amnon Ron - Director, AUCB – BA (Hons) Film Production, 2011

Madeline Fishman - Production Design, AUCB – BA (Hons) Film Production, 2011

Tristan Copley - Smith - Cinematography, AUCB – BA (Hons) Film Production, 2011

Sound Designer - Zemer Altitzer

CONTRIBUTING FASHION DESIGNER -

Dervin Batarlo, University for the Creative Arts, 2010