Laura Owens
Born 1970, Euclid, Ohio
Lives and works in Los Angeles

Laura Owens incorporates a wide and imaginative range of subjects and techniques in her work. Moving with ease between high and low, personal and social, Owens investigates the formal issues of painting through a highly personal blend of abstract and representational imagery. Her work incorporates an eclectic range of visual references. Owens borrows where she pleases�from modernist movements past such as Color Field, Op Art, and Pattern and Decoration, from European painters like Henri Rousseau and Toulouse-Lautrec, from anonymous mediums such as textile and embroidery. The artist has said that she approaches her paintings in “a matter-of-fact way in order to take some of the preciousness or exclusiveness out of the history of the practice.” Her unique style moves from figurative to abstraction with energy, whimsical doodles, and sophisticated fine line drawing, creating works that favor pleasure and fantasy for the viewer.