Laura Culic

I have a strong, life-long affinity for our natural world – most especially for water.  The many endlessly fascinating qualities of water: its depths, reflections, movement, and energy, seem to pervade almost all my work. I am captivated by the variety and complexity of life on the shoreline and on the surface, and by the myriad flora, fauna and microscopic life forms below. My work is rooted in the natural environment. I work exclusively in the studio, and paint in response to my observations of, and experience in, nature.

I begin a painting without a predetermined idea of an outcome, with broad gestural movements using graphite, crayon and washes of paint – establishing a base over which I apply innumerable layers of paint. My work is process-driven. While working, I am utterly engrossed by the paint and the process. Using mark making and drawing combined with the application of paint with various tools, the surface builds, areas are scraped back, underlayers are revealed. This process, I feel, is akin to the cycles of nature; of erosion and decay, growth and renewal.

As a mature painter, I increasingly recognize that, above all else, painting is a discipline that requires infinite faith. Painting is a labour of love and often a painstakingly slow process. Every painting demands that, even when I think I don’t know how to paint, and I cannot foresee a direction, I must trust the process, and trust that a satisfying painting will eventually emerge from where there was once nothing.