Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Laura Fayer. This marks the artist’s third solo exhibition with Kathryn Markel Fine Arts.
Fayer's mixed media paintings evoke an ephemeral natural world, poised in a delicate balance between dynamism and tranquility, movement and harmony.
Fayer creates her mixed media works through a combination of printmaking and painting. She uses handmade stencils and stamps to print patterns and lines onto very thin Japanese paper. This is then applied to the canvas in layers and painted over with acrylic medium, which causes the paper to dissolve into transparency. Only the printed marks remain, interspersed with rich swathes of acrylic paint. Throughout this process, the surface of the canvas undergoes constant changes, hundreds of micro-decisions, revisions, additions, and overlays. The resulting effect creates a world of constant movement and change, where printed images float and weave among the painted washes of color.
“I rely on visual memories of childhood years living in Japan and allow the memories to help shape my sensibilities,” says Fayer. “When I think back on these years, the memories are vast and fluid.” Capturing the fluidity of her memories abroad, Fayer’s pieces have a quiet but incessant, organic rhythm. Her imagery is based on waves, wind, moving trees, and music. Although much of Fayer’s work is nature-based and inspired by landscapes, she rarely relies on specific scenes or spaces, preferring to source from abstracted sense-impressions of movement and unusual juxtapositions.
Laura Fayer is a graduate of Harvard University in Visual and Environmental Studies and holds a Master of Fine Arts in painting from Hunter College in New York City. She has received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, as well as grants from International Residencies for Artists and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in NH, Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE.