Three by Three: Guest Artists in Focus

QUESTION 2.    When did you first recognize that a painting didn’t need to “solve” anything to be complete?

• ANSWER 2.     Pretty much immediately. If you don’t have a client you don’t have a problem to solve or idea/product to sell. It was so freeing. I could just tell the stories I wanted to tell and see if the viewer saw it the same way. If they didn’t and they saw it a completely different way it didn’t matter. It’s been a very stress free, new creative outlet.

Laura K. Donavan
Painter

MEDIUM:    

BIO:    Laura Donavan is a painter known for her Western surrealism. Born in Rockledge, Florida, she grew up surrounded by the excitement of NASA’s heyday and the lush flora and fauna of central Florida.

As a child, she spent summers at her grandparents’ ranch in Colorado, where she developed a lasting love for the mountains. While studying at the University of South Florida, she shifted her focus from veterinary medicine to graphic design and illustration, eventually transferring to the Colorado Institute of Art in Denver. There, she met her husband, Bill. Over three decades, they built a design studio serving both local and national clients, calling Jackson Hole, WY and northwest Montana home.

In 1999, the couple moved their business, two young sons and a couple dogs to their longtime home in Salida, Colorado.

Today, Donavan devotes herself to fine art. Her paintings pay homage to the animals, landscapes, mythology and iconography of the American West. Each piece invites the viewer into a visual world of shadow and storytelling, a surreal snapshot that balances the real with the imagined.


INSTAGRAM:    @LauraDonavan

QUESTION 3.    Where in your paintings do you feel most free—and where are you still holding back?

• ANSWER 3.     Each painting lets me practice. Fairly often, a piece might not turn out the way I envisioned it. My mistakes used to matter more to me until I realized they rarely mattered to other people. Paintings I didn’t think were quite right someone else would love. I also have paintings I love that no one looks at. I’ve had so many years of critique and client work that there are very few (if any) constraints I put on myself. People ask if I make mistakes which I find really remarkable. There's something hard to fathom about the amount of paper, paint and canvas consigned to mistakes. It makes playing music seem very appealing! I still work to try and not get hung up on the mistakes. I gotta just keep playing the music.

QUESTION 1.    What instinct from your design background do you still lean on—and which one have you had to unlearn?

• ANSWER 1.    My design background has been beneficial for much of my work. While I started my career in graphic design (before the advent of the adobe suite) I did grow with it; starting with Freehand. I did a lot of T-shirt designs in the early years and I would cut amberlith for the screens. That is unheard of today. I started design with a lot of patience. I learned the Wucius Wong principles of two dimensional design and I still use those principles today. When I meet new artists I can tell pretty quickly which of them have also been designers and illustrators. Working on canvas I do find that design mistakes happen long after the paint has dried. I just have to let it go. The speed with which you can change designs/mistakes on the computer is (quite obviously) not an option in a painting. You just have to do another painting. What I like most is not having a client to please or ad copy I need to work into the piece. Graphic design is about a client, a committee, a brand story, sometimes even a dumb idea. This art is simply mine.

Moving Out

Evening Choral

Little Sojourner 2

All copyright and reproduction rights are reserved by Laura K. Donavan.
Artwork may not be reproduced in any form without the artist's express written permission.

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