COLOR IN MOTION MEET LOCAL ARTIST LAURA BRENTON, A MEMBER OF THE BOULDER CONTEMPORARY GROUP, WHO TRANSLATES MOVEMENT AND MUSIC INTO PAINTED FORM ARTICLE BY KATHERINE OWEN PHOTOGRAPHY BY POPPY & CO. BY KELSEY HUFFER
In artist Laura Brenton’s home studio, tucked along the edge of Boulder’s foothills, abstract paintings large and small greet all who enter with vivid color and lively shapes. Some are finished works, hung on the wall for contemplation in their final form. Others, resting against large swaths of plastic protecting the walls and floors, are works in progress. They’re all explorations— of color, shape, and sometimes, even movement and sound. Before she was a painter, Laura was first a dancer. On a whim, she attended a painting class with her mother-in-law and quickly took to painting colorful landscapes. “I loved the color, and it’s so fun learning something new,” she recalls. Quickly, though, her curiosity found its way to the abstract: “I started wondering, ‘Why does it have to be a landscape?’”
Today, much of her work is about movement, explored in colorful abstractions. “When somebody says, ‘What’s your inspiration?’ what that question really feels like is, ‘How do you return to yourself ?’” she says. “To me, it’s movement. It’s slowing down and looking at things sideways.” In fact, to achieve this connection to motion, she often starts her works with her eyes closed, allowing movement to dictate the initial marks. “It’s kind of like my signature or my graffiti tag,” she laughs. From there, she works with a mix of water-soluble markers and acrylic paints in various layers, sometimes adding, sometimes subtracting. “I’m always looking for what’s unpredictable, and the only way to find that is just to keep going and see what catches your eye,” she says. CONTINUED >
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