Laurie Weller

Laurie Weller
Adjunct Professor of Art
Department of Visual Arts
Program Areas: Painting & Drawing / Intermedia

Professional Preparation
M.F.A. - Painting and Drawing, Tyler School of Art, Pennsylvania
B.F.A. - Painting, University of Illinois

Profile
Laurie Weller teaches watercolor and printmaking courses and has been a member of the faculty since 1988.Weller studied painting at the University of Illinois (BFA 1976) and painting and printmaking at Tyler School of Art at Temple University (MFA 1980). She moved to Texas in 1980 and has taught at Southwest Texas State University, Texas Woman’s University, Texas A & M @ Corpus Christie and Austin College in Sherman. Artist residencies at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, as well as Atlantic Center for the Visual Arts, were pivotal experiences, each spawning new ideas in her painting. She and her husband Gary, also a painter, live with a dog, and two cats in the woods outside Denton.

Weller, first known for her contemporary work in watercolor, now paints primarily in acrylic on wood. She is listed in numerous editions of "Who's Who in Art in America", "Who's Who in the South and Southwest”, and Who’s Who of American Women. Her paintings have been exhibited regionally as well as nationally and are included in many corporate and private collections. Past exhibitions include "Watercolor USA 86: The Monumental Image" at Springfield Art Museum in Springfield, Missouri, "Private Treasures: Public View" at the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, and "New Works" at Laguna Gloria Art Museum in Austin, along with numerous solo exhibitions in private and university galleries, including Oklahoma University in Norman, TCU in Fort Worth, Austin College in Sherman, and the Visual Art Center in Denton, Texas.

Artwork
This work has roots dating back many years; a key influence was my Associate Artist in Residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2001. While prior paintings were vaguely influenced by music and dance, this new work was inspired both literally and figuratively by the dancers and musicians at the center, who allowed me into their studios to sketch and paint while they created their own compositions. I have continued, in the years since, to explore ideas that were spawned by that experience. At times the relationshipis quite obvious, relating to shape and form, often taken directly from drawings of instruments belonging to family and friends, and at others it is more abstract, in form and mark. I think of the relationships between the paintings as similar to that of an ensemble in music, each painting makes a statement of one kind on its own, and another statement as part of an exhibition, changing with every installation.

 

All artwork 2009
a. 'Kaleidoscope' / mixed media
b. 'Cycles' / acrylic on wood
c. 'Plunge' / mixed media
d. 'Spiroid' / mixed media
e. 'Shift' / mixed media