Laura Letchinger
Los Angeles, CA
Contemporary abstract expressionism inspired by nature and the human-built world. Please visit my website for installs, additional sold works and more info.
Message
"I began making art when I was little. Drawings, cartoons, calligraphy . . . and countless chalk murals . . . were a huge part of my childhood in a small town outside of Chicago. One of the first memories I have of mark making was when I was very little and discovered piles of new white paper and freshly sharpened pencils in my grandparents’ attic. I vividly remember drawing a single crisp line across the vast emptiness of the paper, and for whatever reason, I loved everything about that. Still do." --L.L.
Laura Letchinger grew up in a small rural town outside Chicago during the 70’s and early 80’s. As a child she spent a lot of time making art, exploring nature, riding horses and playing sports and classical piano. At a young age she determined she would become a professional artist, but life took different directions. After earning a double major in pre-med and psychology, she moved to Chicago and completed coursework for a master’s degree in counseling. Realizing that this was not her calling, she left the program and spent the majority of the 90’s living in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood waiting tables, working in various aspects of film production and corporate show production, and volunteering with a grassroots nonprofit environmental television show where she learned the basics of documentary filmmaking. Soaking up graffiti almost every day while distance running and biking to and from work, that imagery fueled the poetry she wrote at the time and became a strong influence in her future painting practice. Letchinger moved to Los Angeles in 1996 with her husband and began making art consistently in 2013, beginning with portable watercolors while waiting in her son and daughter’s school pick-up lines. Self-taught, her artworks have been collected and placed within the U.S. and internationally by individuals, designers, art consultants, public art agencies, architects and real estate developers, and she has been represented by galleries in Los Angeles and Houston.
Statement
I'm interested in the intersection of nature and the human-built world, with pictures evolving organically through intuition and experimentation. I also collaborate with South L.A. based mosaic arts nonprofit Piece by Piece to produce large combination painting/mosaic artworks.
My approach to painting is, for the most part, unplanned and in the moment because that's the best way for me to connect with the universal creative energy that's in and around all of us, all the time. When we're able to really click with it, whether through our jobs, hobbies, family roles, work in our communities, or even when we're just quietly alone . . . I describe it as a feeling of energized calm with inspired momentum, like riding an extremely kind and supportive wave. So for me, making art is way bigger than the individual. It's a partnership that, before anything else, creates the fertile soil from which all the paintings grow no matter materials used, content explored or final "style" realized. That connection, itself, is the art the resulting picture points to and viewers are encouraged to find messages uniquely theirs within the brushstrokes. Making paintings in this way invokes deep feelings of gratitude and a sense of the potential for this type of creative synergy to help make things better for all of us, and for all life on the planet, as we evolve.