About the present: 
Lucidlexicon.com, words, action painting, color, plasticity, current work. It appears that I made a break with the past, but my latest work refers to my artistic roots, past and skills acquired over the years. The spirit and subject matter embrace certain aspects of contemporary American culture. I often have a dozen works in progress simultaneously, allowing works to evolve and resolve themselves through the divine creative process. There are often practical reasons for this work method because materials require drying or setting before the next phase can take place. Updating and learning are always involved with applying “modernized” materials and methods to painting, sculpture and printmaking. Creativity is a dichotomy pulling in opposite directions and a gift to be used and fostered, which, at times, is a wretched curse, like a millstone with obligation. It can be an obsession. The sense of inquiry is a major factor of the creative process but most successfully manifests itself with mastery of the materials and practice. The true artist must master the craft and practice of fine art and have working knowledge of art history and aesthetic theories.   

About PRESSED, the process, experimental printmaking as painting and performance works:
Monopressings and Flex-O-Grams © 1995 are monotypes printed on fine rag papers and canvas. The process crosses Action Field painting with innovative printmaking, which in 1995 was a new novel genre. My concept required making my own  “inks” from non-toxic materials. My inks are brushed directly onto the subjects in a painterly abstract Expressionist manner. The human body is the printing matrix and impressions are made with body weight and hand pressing. The subjects become living paintings in the process and benefit from the transformational experience. Other benefits of the collaborative process are the interactive nature and the subject’s effect on the results. The works present color and texture, while the forms are recognized as human. The images challenge traditional and idealized imagery, and offer an alternate view of the average person, clearly figurative but not illustrative. 

 The Breast Project: Artists’ Comments On An American Obsession was a multi disciplinary project to examine contemporary female imagery in popular media and advertising. The word “breast” is a metaphor for women in general. The 1995 juried “images of the breast” show in my San Francisco SOMA studio was produced in “guerilla” fashion by volunteers without financial support. The result was that women began talking about body image, objectification, psychology, myth, esteem and women’s health. The dialogue took on a life of it’s own. The Breast Project was conceived during the highly publicized controversy over cosmetic breast augmentation implants in the early 1990’s. Women’s health issues, the effect of altered and idealized female images and the artificial breast obsession came to everyone’s attention. I created the monotypes to alter popular human images by using the expressive power of the human figure. The prints were meant to counter stereotypes and depict non-idealized women and men. The series challenges contemporary ideas of beauty while presenting its own aesthetic. People continue to be fascinated by their inherent contrary beauty and distortions as timeless icons.  (19 tk SOMA 1995)

Monopressings & Flex-O-Grams, Monotypes as portraits: People became excited very quickly about my process as a novel form of portraiture. Commissions for custom pressings came from women and men, and pregnant ladies who wanted to participate in the art making process with a working artist. Contact me for PRESSED portraits.

Painting as Printmaking as Performance: The first live demonstration took place in 1995 at Enrico’s in North Beach sponsored by ArtTables, a dining and art discussion group for local artists, writers and art collectors. What normally takes place in a private art studio turned into art entertainment quite by accident. The performance works with painting and printing were collaborative works with other artists, poets, filmmakers, photographers, artists’ models, gallery directors and organizations. I produced and starred in 19 original pieces from 1995-2001, that took place at my show receptions and multi media events at art venues, galleries, cultural centers and colleges in San Francisco, the SF bay area, Sedona, Key West and Mendocino. The final performance work was part of “The Healing Power Of Art,” a multi-media ceremonial healing ritual in Jan 2001 at Cellspace in San Francisco.

Activism for Women’s Health: Monopressings & Flex-O-Grams © 1995 have been shown at fund raising and awareness events for women’s health and breast cancer research (Walk for the Cure, Run for the Cure and others). “The Healing Powers of Art” life-printing workshop took place in my studio in 2006 for the Breast Cancer Action Network.

Printing and Painting with mud and metallic inks, non-traditional materials:
I became interested in alternate materials for making art in the 1980’s, and experimented with my own sculpture miscasts, found objects, powdered metal, car paint, and soil. During a 1999 art retreat in the Mendocino Woodlands, I collected fine dry silt from the Redwood forest floor along Big River, and mixed my own special “ink” for the “mudder earth” series. The mud series was intended as a reminder of our human connectedness to the elements, nature and the great earth, and reverts back to painting and printing with natural soil.

Laura La Forêt Lengyel © 2010. All Rights Reserved.