NOVA Painting

ARTISTS STATEMENT My work is about the relationship between light and form: how light affects form and form affects light, primarily in visual, psychological and symbolic ways. My forms originated with the single human form and and have evolved over time into simple geometric shapes of circles and rectangles representing the human condition. The light comes from artificial sources and represents not only the invisible reality underlying appearance, but also the spiritual dimension which gives life meaning. This interaction between light and form gives me a way of examining human existence both in the spiritual (invisible, intangible) dimension and in the physical dimension of observable phenomena. BIO Laurie Lea was born in Atlanta, Georgia and lived and worked there for the first part of her career. She belonged to the Fay Gold Gallery and exhibited nationally and internationally. ("American Drawings, 1976", Smithsonian Arts Institute, Portsmouth, Virginia, catalogue; and “USA” Portrait of the South”, Palazzo Venezia, Rome, Italy, catalogue). She won numerous awards, such as the 1972 Purchase Award for the Georgia Arts Council. For several years she served on the Fulton County Arts Council in Atlanta, Georgia, initiating and helping create the Per Cent for the Arts Ordinance for Atlanta, Georgia. During these years she also co-created and helped oversee the Georgia Artists International Fund, which sponsored Artists' Travel Grants and organized international exhibitions for Georgia artists as well as reciprocal exhibitions for European artists in the United States. She worked from a live model for over 20 years. Working exclusively on a single form, it became increasingly evident she was not interested in the individual, but rather in an idea or principle which the form represented. In the year that Lea moved to New York City, 1988, someone gave her a small twisted neon tube that she wired to a life size metal figurative sculpture. That act marked the birth of the concept which would be the focus of her life's work: the dynamics of the interrelationship of light and form. She was able to pursue developing this dynamic through funding for public installations from the Brooklyn Arts Council; Artists Grants/Artists Space; and the New York State Council on the Arts. Other awards and residencies included Southern Arts, England, and the Arts Council of Great Britain.