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About The Artist
Artist Statement
I make mixed media paintings, sculptures, and ceramic pieces that are inspired by the natural world and speak of my deeply spiritual experiences and daily life while raising three young children. My work investigates the way playful craft materials can be manipulated with other fine art components as a means of exploring connections between the visceral, graphic, sublime, and carnal. The organic forms I describe are intricately adorned wombs, hearts, and dwellings that display the external evidence of internal rebirth and are physical manifestations of things spiritually discerned. They embody a visual dichotomy that parallels the complex nature of domestic life as a mother which is as relentless as it is intensely joyful. My work illuminates ideas of literal and spiritual pregnancy, growth, new life, and birth.
I utilize material and sensory experience as a means to explore meaning. Material is worked until there is a shift into another realm: a skin of swollen glitter becomes flesh, a sack, or an embryo, pins become candy, a pom pom becomes a microorganism or disease, and a luscious ceramic surface is riddled with unsettling bumps. My work strives to have a visceral presence by virtue of formal aesthetics, often riding the line between what is beautiful, grotesque and delicious. This speaks to various dichotomies often referenced in my work, such as trauma and healing, light and dark, spirit and flesh. Floral lace patterns can suggest the idea of safety, comfort and warmth, while also serving as a visual garden to tend.
Bio
Lael earned her BFA from Southern Methodist University and her MFA from the University of Iowa, both with concentrations in painting. Exhibits of her work include solo, two person, and group exhibitions mainly throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. Her work has been featured in issue 13 of Create! Magazine, an I Like Your Work Podcast Exhibition, Peripheral Vision Arts Salon 2017, Studio Visit Magazine, Art Habens Contemporary Review, as well as on various blogs including The International Fine Arts Fund, Create! Magazine, and Artist Meets Mother. Lael has taught at the secondary and college level and currently lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth area with her husband and children.
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