Laura Lohar

I began my training in a nursery school in New Jersey, creating works on newsprint with finger paint. Wherever there was paper and anything that made a mark, I was there using them to try to capture my experiences. After committing to it as a lifestyle, I continued my studies in design and art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, earning my bachelor’s degree in industrial design in 2000. While design continues to be a subject I appreciate, it was by no means my calling, and painting became the center of my world shortly after graduation. My paintings seek to capture both realistic and abstract human moments in representational and abstract styles, and typically capture subjects in vulnerable moments, between the picture perfect and mid-sentence, crystallizing the habitually over-looked, uncomfortable, and sometimes painful moments of everyday individuals. In immortalizing these moments in oil on canvas, I attempt to counter act the flippancy of the digital age\'s retouching and retakes. My style is smooth and molded, building layers of oil paint over each other to give an uninterrupted feeling of flesh, framing the subjects up close, giving the feeling that one is invading the personal space of the subject, putting the observer in the middle of the awkwardness. Apart from painting, I have also collaborated with other artists through the non-profit artist collective, Booklyn, illustrating and creating one of a kind art books that are in collections at Dartmouth, University of Miami, and private collections around the world.