Laurie Skantzos

Laurie’s contemporary, process driven painting is largely inspired by the interactions of colour, shape and application. She was born in Toronto and studied fine art at the University of Waterloo. Her work is displayed in galleries throughout Ontario and she has been an active member of the art community for over twenty years, regularly participating in shows such as the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair and International Affordable Art Fairs with Spence Gallery. Laurie’s work is included in private and public collections across North America, Europe and Asia. She works from her studio in Guelph Ontario. Laurie teaches sessions at the Guelph School of Art, Elora Centre for the Arts, The Hive in Alton Mills and a week long intensive during the summer at the Wellington County Museum. She offers private and semi-private classes in her studio. The focus is on building a visual vocabulary of tools and techniques while further establishing each participant’s unique voice.

Shape, colour, line, materiality of paint and the myriad ways that they can interact are the jumping off points for my painting explorations. I truly think of painting as a dedicated practice, one that I must return to as often as possible to feed my artistic curiosity and my soul. Endless fascination and dedication to remaining present in each moment fuel my quest to express what is, at first, intangible. My painting practice is experimental and rigorous. I work with oil, incorporating cold wax medium mixed with alkyd. Shapes upon shapes are layered, using hand cut templates. These are somewhat crudely made and imperfectly spaced, which thwarts initial control while indicating the human hand involved in the making. Working wet in wet, unexpected transfers occur, adding richness to the surface. I scrape back in areas to reveal linear elements from the edges of raised forms. In some sections there are up to 15 layers. Layering, scraping back and re-application of paint in a manner that both obscures and reveals simultaneously, leads me through a process driven inquiry where discovery and exploration are the main objectives. Evident in the final works are a diaristic passage of time and the history of development.