Works by Laura Newman
Laura Newman is an American abstract artist. She creates vivid, dynamic paintings that revel in a harmonious balance between gestural brushwork, hard-edge geometric spatial arrangements and layered, architectural compositions. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Newman currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Education
Laura Newman earned her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art and also studied at the California Institute of the Arts and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Graduate Program. She has received fellowships and awards from The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The American Academy in Rome, The New York Foundation for the Arts, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters. An Associate Professor in the Art Department at Vassar College since 1998, she was previously on the faculty at The Yale University School of Art, Brown University, The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Pratt Institute and The Cooper Union School of Art.
Technique
Newman paints in a light-filled studio in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. Her practice includes large-scale canvases created primarily with oils and acrylics and smaller works on paper created with ink, watercolors and other mediums.
Her techniques include staining, pouring, and a combination of gestural and meticulous mark making. About her process, Newman has said, "My paintings often take specific qualities of particular places as points of departure, but I try to approach the image without preconceived ideas and to discover forms through improvisation."
Her finished paintings combine geometric delineations of space, ephemeral color fields, dynamic lines and organic forms, resulting in atmospheric images evocative of representational landscapes, but always opening up to something more, something beyond.
Newman's paintings may look like they are quickly made because she values a sense of freshness; But in reality they take a long time to complete. The artist starts by setting down rudiments of a visual idea, reworks the painting over and over until she achieves an image that she recognizes but that at the same time surprises her.
Inspiration
Newman often finds inspiration in the view out her studio window, which looks out at a large swath of sky over the city. The vastness of the open air juxtaposes with the intermingling of construction and deconstruction occupying the urban landscape. Her work often explores that interplay between the confinement of built environments and the freedom of open spaces. Elements of window frames sometimes inhabit her paintings, creating a sense of distance between spatial planes. Newman is interested in the interplay between representation and abstraction. She strives for a language of forms, lines, colors and spatial relationships that can be read both formally and abstractly or interpreted more broadly as fictional, illusionary environments.
Artist Statement
"A painting comes alive for me when I can feel the space in it. In my recent paintings, brushstrokes cohere into structures that serve as containers for space and fold together a range of approaches to form, among them hard-edged geometrical shapes, loose gestural dry brushed strokes of ink, and architectural references. Painting for me is about discovering an image. Through the process of working and reworking, layering and painting out, I attempt to locate a specific but unnamable place with its own rules of gravity and rhythm, that surprises me but I recognize."
Relevant quote
Sharon Butler, founder of the Two Coats of Paint project, wrote the following about Laura Newman in 2012:
“Laura Newman’s color has always been sweet but brittle...the seemingly casual color shapes pulsate, gnash, and hover, like the pigeons she watches outside her Williamsburg studio…[Newman’s paintings] at first delight, then purposely confuse our expectations, leaving us to sort out the point of view, the enigmatic shapes, and the hints of narrative on our own. These paintings are a gentle reminder that things aren’t always as they seem.”
Collections
Works by Laura Newman are in the permanent collections of multiple institutions, including those of Chase Manhattan Bank, IBM Corporation, Prudential Insurance Company and the University of Arizona.
Exhibitions
Laura Newman has exhibited in multiple solo exhibitions in New York as well as in group exhibitions in galleries and museums along the US East Coast and in Canada. Her work has been written about extensively, including in Artforum, The New York Times, and the Brooklyn Rail.
Solo Exhibitions
2017
University of Connecticut, Storrs Connecticut
2012
Laura Newman, Recent Paintings, Jen Bekman Gallery, New York
2011
Air , 1 GAP Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
2010
Glass Walls and Billboards , Nova S cotia College of Art and Design , Halifax
2007
Lesley Heller Gallery, New York
2004
Skies and Highways , Randolph - Macon College, Ashland, Virginia
2002
Bellwether Gallery, New York
1996
Tenri Gallery, New York
1987 - 9
Victoria Munroe Gallery, New York
Group Exhibitions
2018
Laura Newman and Marcy Rosenblat, 490 Atlantic Gallery, Brooklyn, May
2016
Machines of Paint and Other Materials , 72 Front Street, Brooklyn
Conference of the Birds, Shirley Fiterma n Art Center at BMCC , New York
Surface Two , Arena, Brooklyn, New York Inside Out, Art 101, Brooklyn, New York
2015
Working in NYC , Central Connecticut University, New Britain, Connecticut Paperazzi 3, Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
2014
My Big Fat Painting , Brian Morris Gallery, New York
Clouds, Lesley Heller Workspace, New York
2013
Rockslide Sky , Fordham University at Lincoln Center, New York
2012
What’s the Point, Jen Bekman Gallery, New York
Charles Hagen: Photographs, Laura New man: Paintings, Carol Shen Gallery Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn, New York
2011
Little Languages/Coded Pictures, Lesley Heller Fine Art, New York
2010
Rhyme not Reason, curated by John Yau, Janet Kurnatowski Gallery
2009
Mary Carlson and Laura N ewman, Big, Small/Casual Gallery, Long Island City
2008
The 183rd Annual Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art , The National Academy of Design, New York
2006
Air, Monya Rowe Gallery, New York
2002
Art on Paper, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina
1998
Current Undercurrent, The Brooklyn Museum, New York 3
1997
Dreams and Dislocations, Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York
1995
Temporarily Possessed , The New Museum, New York
1992
American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York
1984
New Work, The New Museum, New York
2017
The Drawer, Revue de Dessin, Volume 12, Untitiled, March, selected by Barbara Soyer
“Laura Newman on a Diagonal Line in Matisse’s View of Notre Dame”, Painters on Painting
2016
“Machines of Paint ” Art Critical . c om http://www.artcritical.com/listing/machines - paint - materials/
2015
No Shape Bends The River So Long , Monica Berlin and Beth Marzoni, cover
2014
Art Critical, “My Big Fat Painting” http://www.artcritical.com/listing/my - big - fat - painting - curated - by - rick - briggs/
2012
Rockslide Sky, an exhibition inspired by Roberto Bolano’s story Gomez Palacio , Fordham University at Lincoln Center , curated by Carleen Sheehan, catalog
Bloom , 20 x 200 Editions, Digital Print Edition
Rorschach , 20 x 200 Editions, Digital Print Edition
Sharon Butler, Two Coats of Paint, October 2 http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2012/10/images - laura - newman.htm
2011
Laura Newman interviewed by Emily Auchincloss NYArts Magazine, October
2010
Amy Sillman, “Never trust a Laura Newman Vertical” Artcritical.com, September 9, 2010 (Revised essay) http://artcritical.com/2010/09/04/sillman - newman/ “ Laura Newman, Glass Walls and Billboards” , catalog Essays by Amy SIllman and John Yau , NSCAD University, Halifax
2008
The National Academy Museum, The 183rd Annual Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art (catalog)
2007
Stephanie Buhmnan, exhibition review, page 35, The Brooklyn Rail , October
2004
“Laura Newman, Skies and Highways”(catalog) Randolph - Macon College, Ashland, Virginia
2002
Martha Schwendener, Artforum Magazine, Summer Exhibition Review
Judith Linhares, "Laura Newman," Bomb Magazine, Spring
1996
Roberta Smith, The New York Times, June 21