Laura Hohlwein

Laura Hohlwein (b. 1963) is a contemporary abstract painter working in Northern California. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Vermont College and an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Art from Transart Institute in Austria. She has been represented by the John Natsoulas Gallery since 2013. She is an educator and a published poet.

Hohlwein writes of her process:

“It is hard to find words for the experience of painting, which, though I love words, speaks eloquently to me entirely without them.

I don’t normally begin from or force any narrative or concept onto my work. My paintings begin largely as an exploration of color and the formal aspects of composition. Yet, whether or not images or stories reveal themselves, explicitly or implicitly, the work is always, in one way or another, about my experience of consciousness - of thinking, sensing, being, questioning, recollecting, forgetting.

The fragment is not separated from the whole, but is a constituent part, alive and changing. Indeed, it is a bit of an obsession - and not coincidentally a fundamental quality of painting itself - that each discernible individual element is contained and defined by the space, the field, around it.

At scales atomic to astronomical, this remains a consistent quality of the physical world, which I find very moving, eternal, and comforting, even as all things change, all the time. This phenomena ‘feels’ true emotionally and psychologically as well. All experiences happen within a larger context.

My paintings are meditations on these very primary physical, psychological, even spiritual relationships. These mutable realms precede language and express themselves to me in the living, vibrant dialogue of shape and color.”