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Artist Statement

As individuals we are constantly negotiating and renegotiating our understanding of the world--both around us as well as within us. My work is concerned with these in-between moments, simultaneously endings and beginnings, that hover somewhere between being and becoming.

I am drawn to the tactile, sensual subtleties of our world during this time when the word “touch” so frequently references a finger-swipe across a flat glass screen. I use a deliberately physical process and emphasize the handmade mark in creating works that explore subtleties of expression; I hope that the lines, textures, and accumulation of marks in my work suggest a process, a history, and a sense of presence.

Biography

Laura Widmer is a visual artist based in Kelowna, British Columbia. Her work explores themes of intimacy, time and moments of personal transition. She uses traditional printmaking and papermaking methods in her work and enjoys the contrast they provide to the digital and increasingly virtual spaces we inhabit in the contemporary world.

She started making her own paper by hand in 2005. Laura is currently incorporating handmade paper into her original prints and she is actively exploring paper as material, subject and object. She states, “In 2014 I attended a residency at the Banff Centre and immersed myself in the idea of working “in” paper as opposed to simply working “on” it. Increasingly I am thinking of the page less as an anonymous support and more as a meeting place, the physical space where idea and viewer intersect.”

Laura’s work has earned awards at the Open Studio National Printmaking awards (First Prize, 2010 and Honourable Mention, 2014), The Boston Printmakers Biennial (Framingham, MA 2011), and more recently, at the Ink Masters Print Exhibition (Cairns, Australia 2016) and at Stand Out Prints (Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, MN 2016).

Laura earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in printmaking from the University of British Columbia's Okanagan Campus. She lives and works from her studio in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Her exhibition history can be found here.

Her work is available for viewing in person as well as online purchase at:

Open Studio Contemporary Printmaking Centre in Toronto, ON