Laura Hunt
Fort Worth, TX
Laura Hunt's paintings explore themes of human relationships, emotions, and empathy along with human interaction with the landscape and nature.
Message
Laura Hunt’s art career began at age 16 when she responded to a “Draw Me” Talent Test advertisement in a farm magazine. Art has been a part of her being since her rural Central Texas childhood, surfacing in various ways during adulthood—figure drawing, pastel portraits, commercial illustration, textile wall hangings, greeting card illustration and watercolor. During this time, her free lance graphic design work led to the establishment of her own marketing communications and consulting firm. Ultimately, business and family demands left no time for fine art.
Difficult life changes in 2013 opened the door for Laura to, once again, nurture her artistic spirt with renewed enthusiasm. Ending one career and beginning another, she returned to fine art. Acrylics are Laura’s primary means of expression, as she sometimes incorporates other media into her practice as well. She paints contemporary figures and landscapes in a painterly style, where brushstrokes are evident and where abstraction plays a strong supporting role. Themes of introspection, nostalgia, longing and spirituality appear throughout her work. She chooses an expressive approach that is less about visual accuracy and more about the universal human experience.
In addition to her studio practice, Laura leads an art coaching group, participates in 3rd Saturday Artists, a group which she co-founded, and publishes Studio Insider, her twice-monthly newsletter. She teaches Anyone Can Draw, a workshop for adult beginners. She maintains an active sketchbook habit.
Laura has mounted several solo shows in the North Texas area, and has received recognition from Texas and Neighbors Regional Art Exhibition, the US-China Artists Exhibition, and Frisco Discovery Center, among others. In 2025, Arts Fort Worth presented Laura with its Heart of Gold Emerging Leader in the Arts/Working Artist award. Two of her paintings, Closing Chapters and Resilience, are in Texas Wesleyan University’s permanent collection.
Statement
I paint the human figure and landscapes. Although they offer different opportunities for creative expression, they both engage me with the way light and shadow express form, emotion and the human experience. I’m drawn to the emotion expressed by the gesture of a hand or the tilt of a head, the long shadows cast by a barren desert mesa or the tough resilience of a scrubby tree.
Whether I’m painting a landscape or a face, themes of melancholy, introspection, nostalgia, empathy and social issues bind the work together. Although my work has a naturalistic foundation, creating academically perfect work bores me. I prefer an expressive approach that is less about visual accuracy and more about a universal human experience.