Weight of my Skin
The two studies, “Knock at the Door”, and “Mommy went gardening this morning” are collectively called: “The Weight of my Skin”. They are based on childhood memories of events Laurie experienced growing up in an often violent and fearful Apartheid South Africa.
Paintings that raise questions are just as powerful as those that answer them. These works highlight issues of race, victimhood, and justice. They challenge how we make a stand for/against political systems and ask if such a stand should ever be made at the cost of innocence, at the cost of childhood, at the cost of committing a crime. In a land far away from South Africa, these paintings raise the question: Do we ever have the right to assume that we fully understand the political challenges of another country?
Not Entirely
I am an immigrant
Entirely here, yet not
My past, my people
- a gentle whisper
I am an immigrant
a Paper Kiwi
Entirely here
Yet not.
Calibrated Scrutiny
I see all, I hear all
My private world of wonders
Not many comprehend
My heart squeezes
with all I see
with all I hear
The world may not
But I do
SEE
Kinder Tribe
In this body of work, Laurie explores contrasts in societal norms across decades. She examines childhood in a decade other than the current. The viewer is left impacted, questioning how change has occurred, why it's occurred, and whether it's a good thing. Where is the childhood when having a crow as a pet was normal? Our relationships with siblings are the longest lasting relationships in our lives. How have we been impacted by them? Of course, your response is neither a given nor a certainty, because some works are simply about nostalgia, or sisterhood, or those outside the picture plane, a journey through time, to a place, a memory, a fleeting emotion.... back, way back, where memories are personal, where memories vary even between children who experienced them simultaneously.
Colour has been used to help exclude the surrounds, or at least, to delegate them to a place of secondary importance, thereby sharpening focus on the subject. The work explores society in a bygone time: when siblings were dressed the same, pipes were smoked, and telephones were attached to walls. Yet the nature of a child remains…to imagine and to play
The Sentinel
Consider well, oh Viewer
Your response to what you see
Boys taught to shelter & protect
Once the norm,
Once expected,
Celebrated, & respected.
Now gasped at,
Frowned at...
Consider well, oh Viewer,
As you go from here:
When exactly, the shift
In you appeared.
The Tronie
A place is largely defined by the people who live there. In this body of work, I have used Tronies (heads or mugshots), to capture the people of the Marlborough Sounds; a wild, remote, and untamed area at the top of New Zealand’s South Island. It is a place that requires a lot from a person if you are to call it home – wind gusts well over a hundred miles an hour, earthquakes abound, getting to the supermarket entails a five-hour round trip by car, or a boat and car combination, some homes are accessible by boat only. It is New Zealand’s most remote area. This was my home for eleven years, and it is, or was home to each of my subjects.
I have selected my subjects in much the same way one would cast characters in a play. Each has been drawn from the pool of residents to present the viewer with a collective look at the people who inhabit this vast place of water, hills, and winding roads.
My subjects yielded to my wish to firstly photograph them, then produce paintings of them. It took a lot of trust on their part. Trust that was granted to me solely because I lived there too. The time I spent there was never going to be long enough for me to be considered a local, but apparently it was long enough for me to be allowed into homes, and to use my camera.
Each Tronie is an exploration of the subject’s current physical and emotional state. Simultaneously, each one is an exploration of planes, colour, geometry, and design. These are oil paintings on aluminium. They are an interaction of fluid paint on rigid surfaces, an attempt to create images of beauty whilst maintaining a sense of unashamed honesty about depicting the human face.
I have taken pains to infuse each Tronie with the subject’s individual reaction to be immortalised in paint. There was confusion, shyness, fear, scepticism, arrogance, amusement, vanity, and even some deep humility. In any event, all pretence was stripped away, and I believe that their true essence came to the fore.
When viewed as a whole, this body of work presents the viewer with a Tronie, a mugshot, reflecting the place we all got to share for a brief time in our lives: The Marlborough Sounds
