Bio: Lauren Edmond painter New York City Statement | Present | Past | Future | Contact To receive invitations to shows and exhibits by email, please send email to: lauren@laurenedmond.com by clicking this link or pasting the address into your email program. Artist Statement: : I am inspired to paint scenes when I see something eternal in the present moment. Within the constant flux of contemporary culture, some things remain the same because they evoke emotions that underlie and reveal our basic human nature, which is constant although evolving. Eternal images help to ground us, allowing us to experience the peace of inner security and true confidence, even in a time of great change. Every era deserves to be represented aesthetically and my goal is to provide an artistic mirror of our present time that evokes the feeling of our times by blending myth and art. For the past 12 years, I have used a computer to make my paintings, a further reflection of our current era. Click here to read about the emerging field of digital painting on Wikipedia. Computer-as-medium also allows me to print perfect reproductions of the originals without having to adjust the colors, and, further, allows more people to become art collectors because it keeps prices of original artwork affordable. And, it keeps the environment cleaner. Oil paints are made from petroleum byproducts, and support the oil industry. Purchasing a painting made on a computer is like buying a Prius. It still "takes you there", but with respect for the planet. In Tom Friedman's NYTimes Op-Ed column of December 6, 2006, Mr. Friedman reports on his visit to the 7th wealthiest man in China, Mr. Shi Zhengrong, a green entrepreneur whose goal is to make solar panels affordable. If you think our energy problem is serious now, try extrapolating 20, 50, 100 years into the future.... My choice of media is a statement. In a departure from my abstract work of the 1990's, I returned to my "roots" as a representational landscape/cityscape painter because, as a society, I feel that we have become too alienated from the natural world. We have made too many excuses, we have hidden behind facades of ideas that do not represent our true feelings, so that we have become separated from our feelings, and while that may not seem significant, not knowing how or what you feel makes it impossible to live a whole life or have meaningful relationships with others. Opening the heart remains a valid and necessary function of art. Beautiful art is currently regarded as trite, stereotyped, unimaginative, unoriginal. There is a current preference for conceptual art that explores humanity's dark side. Here's my problem with conceptual art at this time in history. Beauty or positivity, is a conscious choice. By default, we can be negative and dark, and giving our dark side more attention will escalate the negativity. Art that is beautiful or positive is uplifting because it shows you have a choice. Giving in to the negativity desensitizes us to the social malignancies that plague our society, making evil acts seem more acceptable, although they are not. It is not satisfactory to harm children, wage wars for no reason, stick with a system that does not work although there are alternatives, give money to industries that pollute instead of seeking solutions, choosing materialism over experience, always looking ahead to some future time instead of being fully alive in the present. Making beautiful paintings is THE MOST positive and evolutionary statement I can make, as an artist and as a human living on Earth. Present: Please visit the homepage of this website for info on Current Exhibitions. How the paintings on this website are made My artwork is done on a Macintosh compouter using Painter 9.1. To create my paintings, I start with a blank canvas (at 300 dpi) and use a Wacom graphic tablet that plugs into my computer (with a USB cable) and using "oil paint" media, available in Painter, I paint with a stylus. The stylus acts like a brush and I have full control over my brush, including color, size, and opacity. These paintings are fully original -- NOT Photoshop-enhanced photographs! Photographs are NOT embedded in these paintings (not that there's anything wrong with doing that:) it's just not my thing). I print high resolution, 300 dpi, archival pigment prints using archival matte paper. Higher quality paper is also available and using 300 pound rag paper gives better color saturatation and therefore depth. (These are NOT color laser prints.) Most of my paintings are intended to be larger and can be printed onto cotton rag watercolor paper using archival pigments, or onto canvas in a process called Giclee printing. Spending time painting in the Catskill Mountains made me a witness to the toxic strain oil painting places on the environment as well as the health of the artist. After searching other media to replace oils, painting digitally is a challenge that fully engages me as a painter. As a space-challenged NYer, using a computer gives me a studio right in my small apartment-- and there is no color adjustment necessary for perfect prints! As technology integrates into our culture, digital art will continue to gain acceptance, making my choice of medium a non-issue. The scalability of the images makes them versatile for many environments, from greeting cards to murals to the right size for your home or business. Please Note: The paintings displayed on this website are small, low-res (72 dpi) versions of the originals and are only intended for viewing online. Past: Gallery artist: 301 Houston (1983-84) Gallery artist: Leonora Datil (1993-94) Raised in a family that included frequent trips to the Brooklyn Museum and accomplished artists, I started painting oil-on-canvas at age 13 and majored in fine art in high school (Reginald Flood, teacher). I graduated with honors from the University of Buffalo in 1975 with a degree in Literature and then studied drawing and painting at the Art Student's League of NY from 1977-79 (studied with: Thomas Ferguson, Robert Beverly Hale, Gustav Rehberger, and Marshall Glasier). Recent series have included: Paintings from the Catskills (1988-89), Swirl (1990-93), Liquid Bones (1992-94), Flying World (1994-96), artcharts.com (1996-2005), and T-Square Park (2005-2006), Woodstock and beyond.... Artists that inspire my work include: Cezanne, Franz Mark, Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Diebenkorn, Edward Hopper, Degas, Diana E. Birnbaum. Future: My plan for the future is to find gallery representation. I would like to show my paintings full size, printed on heavy watercolor paper and/or canvas in limited editions. Further, I would like to encourage donations for the care and preservation of the trees of the NYC parks, especially and starting with Tompkins Square, my local park and current muse. In the summer of 2006, I took a step towards this goal by participating in the East Village Parks Conservancy Show. Contact Information Lauren Edmond lauren@laurenedmond.com 151 1st Avenue #109 New York, NY 10003 212-979-1996 For more information about these prints, please visit the ordering information page on this website.