2017

"Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.”            -Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are surrounded by repeated lines and angles and the symmetry and compositions they create.  Theses elements are evident in a building’s architecture, the veins on leaves, steps on a ladder, seats in a theater, the structure of a flower, the layout of cities and streets, the scales of a snake, the complexity of technology, and especially in the infinite iterations of fractals.

Laura Willig’s work seeks to recreate these systems in her compositions and bring the viewer’s attention to the repetition of lines, angles, shapes, and color. She uses many different methods of applying acrylic paint and lines except for traditional brush and easel methods.  Paint application is generally by means of palette knife, airbrush, spray paint, fluid painting techniques, and paint washes with isopropyl alcohol dispersion. Line application methods include ink, markers, and taped lines.  Paint and lines are built up in layers creating a complex system of repetitionin composition.

Laura Willig completed her BFA in 2011 from Texas Christian University and now lives and paints in San Angelo, Texas.

             2016
Everything is a balance of chaos and structure, and balance in life is necessary for everything to work properly.  If there is too much chaos, entropy, and decay, a system will collapse.  If there is too much spontaneity and lawlessness, nothing is accomplished, and anarchy happens.  Inversely, too much structure and order can be controlling and oppressive, not allowing for anything dynamic or expressive.  Disorder introduced into a highly structured environment is the harbinger of change; sometimes even systems that seem on first glance to be completely random can, upon close inspection and study, turn out to be incredibly complex in form and structure.  In art, life, technology, and nature, there are endless opportunities to find connections where systems of order and elements of chance can bring about a beautifully balanced conclusion.  From microphysics to astronomy and everything in between, there is always a balance between chaos and structure.

          2012
Color interaction, contrast, and composition are sometimes more interesting to me than subject matter, to an extent.  Some pieces are representational and some are purely abstract. I paint predominately with acrylic washes on plywood, but also with other media such as spray paint, stain, dye, and ink; I like to work both constructively and destructively, by using isopropyl alcohol to repel and disrupt the flow of paint washes and by sanding back into the painting at several stages and removing paint, sometimes back to bare plywood.  I enjoy the dynamic of visible wood grain against both geometric and organic shapes created by the paint as well as the edges of the paint washes that create a dialogue between the color of the wood, and the muted, or bright, or sometimes even metallic colors that I use.