Tad Lauritzen Wright combines symbolism, text, figures, and collage in his witty textural paintings and drawings. His work is refreshingly humorous and honest. It is a form of storytelling, encouraging the viewer to interact and help complete the narrative by visually connecting distinctive elements together. Lauritzen Wright addresses human interaction, community, memory, politics, and societal concerns with a stream of consciousness approach. His paintings act as instructions, games, mazes of continuous line, or conglomerates of memory and experience. Lauritzen Wright's work combines collage techniques with layered automatic type drawings and writings onto canvas, together with controlled areas of paint. Using recognizable images as an anchor and incorporating threads of ambiguity, he considers his pieces experiments in abstraction. Pop culture, art history, and naïveté are all present in his simultaneously accessible and complex work. Contour line drawings, expressive characters, grids of color, and writings from his studio are brought together in a deliberate way while maintaining the integrity and casual demeanor of a sketchbook.

In Philosophy of Beauty strips of canvas are woven and stretched to create a grid of letters that become a crossword puzzle forming words related to beauty, whether they are adjectives, actors’ names, or common phrases. Undertone connects line drawings, patterns, and colors together in a cartoon-like and expressive way. Lauritzen Wright plays with multiple options of interpretation and modes of understanding that he creates for the viewer. He states: “The work is created to remind people of lost thoughts that pass by each of us with or without notice…Playful images are used to reflect a sympathetic approach to life and an understanding of the independent components of each person as well as the collected whole.”

This is his first solo exhibition in New York at Cheryl Hazan Contemporary Art. He has had solo exhibitions at Elder Gallery, Nebraska; Koelsch Gallery, Texas; Julie Baker Gallery, California; and David Lusk Gallery, Tennessee. He has been awarded residencies at the Tamarind Institute and Vermont Studio Center. His work is in many collections, including Tamarind Printmaking Institute, Arkansas Art Center, Brooks Museum, and Katonah Museum of Art. He holds an MFA from the Memphis College of Art and a BFA from Nebraska Wesleyan University.