In a highly anticipated solo exhibition, Geoffrey Laurence seeks to use paint as a vehicle for communicating the human experience through emotional narratives.
Geoffrey Laurence has had a long, diversified career, one in which the artist has designed interiors, photographed for newspapers, made graphic designs for large companies, and recently, as an independent painter. Laurence has a specific message and method to his works, each of which come to the fore during an upcoming solo exhibition at Lacuna Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Opening December 4, Laurence will showcase several of his latest oils that endeavor to challenge contemporary realism as simply “the mechanical reproduction of light particles bouncing off surfaces,” as the gallery writes. Rather, Laurence’s primary motive in painting is to convey human experience through naturalistic works that are also imbued with high emotional and expressive technique and narrative.
Geoffrey Laurence, “Romance,” oil, 26 x 20 in. (c) Lacuna Gallery, 2015
Lacuna states, “Geoffrey does not consider himself a naturalistic realist, nor does he currently have any interest in creating an entertaining magic trick of illusionist experience for the viewer. Rather, he believes that the easy descent into nostalgia for past art forms — which much ‘realism’ today provides — does not satisfy viewers’ needs from contemporary painting. His concern is more with the difficulty of creating emotional responses through his work and with the painting process, of moving and experiencing paint in different ways with a brush, and of engaging the viewer in an emotional narrative.”
Geoffrey Laurence, “Buy, Hold, Sell,” oil, (c) Lacuna Gallery, 2015
Indeed, emotional narrative without a doubt surfaces in the hypnotic “The Old Man’s Shoes.” Amidst a strictly purple interior, a fleshy female nude sits in an armchair. Only wearing a pair of black leather dress shoes –- unquestionably masculine in style –- the subject turns in the chair towards the viewer, draping her left leg over the arm. She gracefully touches her abdomen while pensively gazing out of the frame and towards the viewer’s right. Just beyond a doorway along the right edge of the piece, a pair of projecting feet intrudes horizontally into the frame, presumably belonging to a male partner. “His desire is to make communication of human experience through his art possible,” the gallery continues, “and therefore relies on a ‘realistic’ language rather than ‘realism’ per se, which focuses primarily on subliminal emotional effect at the same time as visual effect.”
“Emotion in Motion: Geoffrey Laurence” opens on December 4 and will hang through December 31.
To learn more, visit Lacuna Gallery.
This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.
