McKenzie Fine Art is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by Salt Lake City- based artist Laura Sharp Wilson in her eighth solo outing with the gallery. The exhibition, along with a concurrent solo show of new drawings by Aric Obrosey, opens on Friday, February 21, with a reception for the artists from 6 to 8 p.m., and runs through Sunday, March 30, 2025.

Laura Sharp Wilson creates idiosyncratic worlds in her acrylic paintings, combining botanic imagery with a formal language of motifs and patterns derived from the world of decorative arts. Her forms, vividly colored and precisely rendered, are set against gold backgrounds, fields of tiny dots, or patterned textile-like imagery. While dense, the compositions are ordered, with the disparate elements encircled, bound, draped or otherwise linked together by thorny vines, chains, cords, ribbons, and ornamental beads.

The works in this exhibition reflect Wilson’s long-time fascination with the patterns found in domestic interiors, ranging from wallpapers, upholstery, drapery and rugs, to decorative objects such as ceramics and jewelry, as well as clothing and accessories. Many of her works explore how styles and aesthetics join with botanical elements to speak of social class and social aspirations, as well as the fragility of the natural world, seen through the lens of childhood memories and personal history. Golden wasp log with Mrs. Hallowell’s nantucket purse sets a pink stylized nurse log--a decaying fallen tree which provides nurture to new seedlings—alongside ornamental signifiers of an upper class interior.

Chinoiserie in Denver reflects memories of a socially important great aunt and Wilson’s fascination with the patterns and cobalt blue color found in her collection of Chinese ceramics. Other paintings are more playful, with references to a beloved first pair of bellbottoms in a Lilly Pulitzer lion pattern, contrasted with the more prosaic imagery of oversized dandelions, which the artist wove into chains as a child. Harkening to the present day, Wilson addresses the evisceration of the natural world and the hollowing out of human identity by technology and social media in the painting They turned me into a ghost. In This impossible world, one floral form implodes while others triumph over their entanglements, creating a structure for survival within an ever-maddening and cruel world.

Laura Sharp Wilson was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico but was raised in New Jersey. She received her MFA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Since the mid-1990s she has been exhibiting her work in galleries and museums nationally and internationally. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Hedreen Gallery, Seattle University and the Nicolaysen Museum in Casper, WY. Her work has been reviewed and featured in the Los Angeles times, the Salt Lake tribune, Hyperallergic, Posit, and Epoch, among others.