The British artist Laura Menzies creates paintings that strive to reveal what is not immediately visible and cannot be put into words. To engage with her artwork is to enter the space of delicate, understated abstractions that ask the viewer to slow down and pay attention. Menzies maintains a meditation practice. Indeed, her paintings represent a space for mindfulness. Contemplating their complex compositions and subtle, sensitive color schemes puts the viewer in touch with the subtleties of her or his own sensibility.
Menzies handles her compositions masterfully. Such works as We Want to Keep Dreaming or Becoming impress by their sense of compositional balance. Even more impressive is the artist’s handling of color. Paintings such as Passage or Inscribed exemplify her expert understanding of the emotive, energetic power of color. These paintings convey an almost Rothko-like, passionate intensity through their use of pigment. Trained as a dancer, Menzies usually works on several paintings at once, moving about her studio in a kind of fluid motion, adding or removing layers of paint as she goes. Her palimpsest-like, sophisticated paintings capture this sense of graceful movement. Her work is held in numerous private collections around the globe.
