It Started With a Feeling
It Started With a Feeling
— that couldn’t be ignored
It began with a superbloom.
In 2020, living in the Santa Barbara area, California experienced one of its most spectacular wildflower seasons in memory — so vast it could be seen from space. Flowers I had never seen before erupted across the landscape in waves of gold, violet, and orange. Something cracked open in me that I couldn't close again.
Over the next four years I explored everything. The Getty Museum. The Getty Villa in Malibu. The Huntington Library. Descanso Gardens with its breathtaking oaks. The Santa Barbara Botanical Garden. The little community garden in Carpinteria. The Santa Ynez Valley. Yosemite. Yellowstone. The Grand Tetons. The beauty of Montana and Jackson Hole. Even the drive up Highway 5 between California and Oregon became inspiration — those golden tan hills rolling like velvet across the landscape.
Color was everywhere. It still is.
This wasn't entirely new for me. For 45 years as a professional haircolorist, color was my language. My clients called me the Color Queen — and I wore that name proudly. I learned early that color isn't just something you see. It's something you feel. It moves through you. And when I retired and the world burst into bloom around me, all of those years of living inside color found a new home — on canvas.
The process begins long before I touch a brush. It starts as a feeling — a compulsion to create something. Sometimes that takes me outside with a camera. Sometimes it takes me to an art store, searching for new paints, tools, inks, and techniques that swirl in my brain. The exploration is the beginning.
When I finally begin a canvas, I start with fluid acrylics and a spray bottle. I love paint dripping. Layer after layer. Different brushes. Sometimes crayons, ink, unexpected tools — until something begins to emerge. It can happen fast and be breathtaking, or take a long time and feel like a mess. If it's a mess? No problem. A little gesso, a little white paint, and I find what's working. The painting takes me on a journey every time.
Color moves me on a deeply emotional level — sunsets, gardens, the ocean, Oregon skies, the rich sienna of turned soil. The contrasts. It's eye candy everywhere I look. Being true to who you are means letting yourself be moved by what moves you — and for me, that has always been color, beauty, and the feeling that something extraordinary is right in front of us if we just stop and look.
I hope these paintings help you see differently too. And if one of them touches your heart — that's exactly why I paint.
— Laura