A R T I S T S P OT L I G H T 89
LAUREN GREINER Written by Brianne Holmes
She likes to capture subtleties of facial expression, the details of hands, and the way hair moves. She likes working with oil paint and has recently developed and affinity for gouache paint. As she works to improve her ability to paint backgrounds, she laughingly refers to the background as her “mortal enemy.” Her passion is drawing, and she professes to be “fascinated by lines.” “They can be so expressive,” she says. Lauren Greiner began drawing as a child—“as soon as I could hold a pen,” she says. Once Lauren picked up that pen, she never let go. “Pretty much all I did in high school was draw,” she says. Although she took art classes in high school, Lauren received no specific guidance, no formal training, until she came to Anderson University. But she knew all along she wanted to be an artist. Through her studies at AU, Lauren has been influenced by the work of nineteenth century artist Alphonse Mucha, whose work is based on curves and lines. The detail of Mucha’s work sparked Lauren’s interest in depicting the human body, and inspired her to focus on detail in her own work. Lauren does not limit herself to classical role models, however. Disney’s animated films exerted an early and lasting influence on Lauren’s work. She admires the art of Mary Blair, who worked on films such as Cinderella, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland. Another of her role models is Clair Keane, an artist involved in the recent Rapunzel film, Tangled. Lauren describes Keane’s style as light, airy, colorful, and whimsical—qualities that now define Lauren’s work. For Lauren, inspiration for art often comes from literature, especially fantasies and fairy tales. “Part of me has always been fascinated by what isn’t real,” she says. She combines the imaginative raw material of fairy dust and magic rabbit holes with a sense of balance and attention to detail. In the world of story, she finds a way of thinking beyond the confines of ordinary life. “That is the power of imagination,” she says. “Stories present an element of realism that isn’t quite real.” Inspired by these stories, Lauren is working on a series of paintings illustrating fairy tales and classic stories, endowing the work with what she describes as her own “whimsical spin.”