ARTIST STATEMENT
When I make abstract mixed media paintings, I allow my materials and process to lead me. I discover new color combinations or the interplay of paint over line or paper, working intuitively without a plan or sketch of the final painting. I build a painting with layers, recording a history of my process. I work with acrylic paint, mark-making tools such as graphite, charcoal, or marker. I work on paper that I paint myself, buy or find in magazines or junk mail.
I have another body of mixed media figurative work that I often work on concurrently with my abstract work. Because a face is the first thing we see as infants and the first thing we recognize, it has become so familiar that we see faces everywhere. As an artist, I can create a face, pushing it far into abstraction while still recognizable as a face (or figure). Unlike my process for abstract paintings, I use a reference photo for these works as a guide to the placement of highlights and shadows, which I choose to follow, change, or leave out. As I bring abstract elements into these paintings, they straddle the abstract world and the real.
BIO
Laura Salzberg is a contemporary abstract artist whose mixed media paintings consist of many contradictions that hold the viewer's interest.
Salzberg earned a BFA in 1979 from SUNY at Purchase, where she studied various media, including photography. She has exhibited her paintings in galleries in New York City, Beacon, NY and online. Several of her pieces have appeared on album covers for privately published CDs and in private collections in the United States and internationally.
Laura Salzberg New York City 1980 - present
Education:
1979 SUNY at Purchase BFA in Visual Arts
1983 Bank Street College of Education MS in Special Education
2009 - present The Art Studio New York
Spring 2018 Art2life Creative Visionary Path
Exhibitions
2024 Face To Face, online show, Art Fluent
2021 True Blue, Art Fluent, online show, Director’s Choice award
2021 Spaces Within, Prince George Gallery, New York, NY Solo Show
2020 As.You.Are Dacia Gallery, New York, NY
2018 Annual Small Works Show Catalyst Gallery, Beacon, NY
2018 Small Works Big Hearts Atlantic Gallery, New York, NY
2018 Bauhaus Prairie Art Gallery, online show
2014 The Art Studio New York Gallery, New York, NY
2012 The Art Studio New York Gallery, New York, NY
Commissions
2019 Album Cover Art for It IsWhat It Is CD by Gary Fogel, New York City
2018 Album Cover Art for Connections CD by Bill Stevens, New York City
2018 DVD Cover Art for Music For Dance by Bill Stevens, New York City
2016 Album Cover Art for Spoken Word Project CD by Bill Stevens, New York City
