In responding to place, space and light, somewhat unexpectedly artist Laura S Elizabeth also found her Sanctuary residency at Lighthouse connected her with a different time…
“I can remember doing a black and white photography course at Lighthouse when I was still in school, making images from the local area and then going in and developing them,” she says.
“Within my practice, I don’t use traditional photography, but I do use digital manipulation and editing in my drawing and that process I learned at Lighthouse was the first time I got to develop film and feel the control you have over exposure.”
Laura’s work plays with the intersections between drawing, painting, sculpture and collage. It’s both playful and intense, considered and instinctive, positioned between the intimate and the infinite.
“The way in which I respond to the world is through imagery. One of the first things I did when I was in that space at Lighthouse was a long format drawing responding in sumi ink and graphite to the reflections of one of the pine trees opposite the function room. It was enabling me to work at a large scale in a free way and see the works in context to each other, as a collective.
“So, once I had a drawing in mind and it had a certain tone to it, that then fed into some of the other pieces that I made. I was there when we had a thunderstorm and videoing the weather and the reflection and the distorted reflection of this moving branch then translating that through graphite on to paper.”
Laura grew up in Poole and did a Foundation diploma at Arts University Bournemouth, eventually graduating from the Royal College of Art with a Masters in fine art printmaking. Her work features in public and private collections internationally and since moving back to Poole she now juggles her artistic practice with full-time teaching.
“Summer is that time to really test out ideas. While I was at Lighthouse I got so excited by these tiny little weeds poking through some broken asphalt in the car park. I took a set of images of those to make another set of drawings with because they were just absolutely exquisite. That’s my next set of work.
“I’ve banked those images so now I can go back to my studio and although it’s more compressed, I know what they’ll look like in space, and I know what kind of qualities they’ll have as a series. Some of it will be sculpted so they have three-dimensionality, and then cast shadows, and some will cast shadows that I’ll draw.
“I try and use the summer as efficiently as possible to plan all these works, I can then make over the academic year.”
And is showing the work part of the plan as well?
“Oh yes,” she says. “To be able to show these images made in that space, responding to that experience, with that kind of resonance, that would be perfect. I had such a good time there – so much light, so much space… I was messaging people and they were saying: ‘Just move in’, ‘Don’t leave’. That would have been great!”
Find Laura on @lauraselizabeth
https://www.lauraselizabeth.com/
(NC)
