McKenzie Fine Art: Laura Watt Exhibition 2009

55 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002 212 989 5467 fax 212 989 5642


	Laura Watt November 19 - December 19, 2009
	Laura Watt's brightly colored oil paintings and gouache drawings are geometric in form and densely patterned. She favors repeated structures--predominately rectangular and diamond-shaped--and forms set within forms. These are arranged in spiraling and spinning compositions, almost kaleidoscopic, and are never entirely hard-edged; instead the paintings have organic movement and painterly irregularities. Other works are distinctly linear in feel, with web-like grids encasing geometric shapes that bulge and undulate across the surface. While the paintings possess affinities with Op and psychedelic painting, Watt has long been interested in painting as a transcendent activity and abstraction as a means of spiritual expression. She cites influences as far-ranging as Buddhist mandalas, Arabic tiles, Pygmy bark cloths, Amish quilts and Scottish tartans, to name a few. With their use of geometric pattern as the primary image structure and repetition as an underlying working method, Watt believes these methods create a bridge between the maker and the receiver, and notes that "working repetitively, with intention, puts one in a meditative state, just as the contemplation of these patterns does. We meet in the pattern." For the artist, pattern is metaphoric and suggestive as well as a reminder of the infinite.