Featured Artist of the month
May 2019
Laine Justice
So Many Creatures Running Away (detail), 2018, ink dye, acrylic, collage, pencil, and crayon on watercolor paper, 11 in. x 8.5 in.
LAINE JUSTICE was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1981, and grew up in Portland, Oregon. Designated a troubled teen, she was sent to CEDU, a WWASP boarding school, and is a survivor of ‘tough love education.’ She studied life drawing at Pacific Northwest College of Art, then painting and sculpture at Pratt Institute School of Fine Arts, Brooklyn, and Lucca, Italy, graduating with a BFA in painting in 2003. Laine works in a wide variety of media such as oil painting, scroll painting, animation, children’s literature, life study, collage, silkscreen, fabric painting, artist’s books, sketching, and drawing. Her work has been exhibited both individually and in group exhibitions at Sonoma Valley Museum, San Francisco Arts Commission, Fouladi Projects, Gallery Lulo, and Jules Maeght Gallery. Laine and her husband live in Northern California with their pug Bernie.
Artist Statement
My favorite word of the moment is pareidolia: the tendency to perceive specific, often meaningful images in a random or ambiguous visual pattern—finding shapes in clouds with your best friend, or saying hello to the man in the moon. Bright moments, and the vast tangle of darkness and chaos, provide opportunities for exploration and discovery, and the observation that life is delicate, nuanced, and changeable. Asking "what do I see?" is a simple question with endless answers.
I make oil paintings dense with detail and tactile qualities such as mini-mosaic, gold leaf and raw pigment; 60 foot–long line drawings on mulberry scrolls using markers, dye and batik techniques; collages of recycled paper and fabric; painted silk; large watercolors; graphite drawings; accordion books; illuminated manuscripts and stories for children; murals; life drawing; and small sculptures.
My most recent exhibition ANIMAL ANIMAL ANIMAL! at Gallery Lulo in Healdsburg, CA, featured eight oil paintings, one sixty-foot mechanical scroll, an accordion book and various gestural works on paper.
Animal DANCE Party, 2018, ink, watercolor, dye, acrylic, gouache, and crayon on brown pastel paper, 25 in. x 19 in.
Flying Money in the Sun, Birds & Dogs (detail of birds), 2019, oil, glass, mica, quartz, onyx, obsidian, and interference pigments, resin, hand-set yellow glass chips, muscovite flakes, and blue glass beads, pigment, crayon, and graphite on satin, 37 in. x 30.5 in.
BIG BIRDS SCROLL (detail: dancing piglet, talking birds), 2019, ink, dye, acrylic, crayon, pencil, and mulberry paper on mulberry paper with redwood rollers, 2.5 ft. x 30 ft.