Volume and Shadow: The Art Portfolio of Laurie J. Cochrane
Laurie J. Cochrane is a painter, photographer, and ceramicist who captures landscapes and abstracted natural views. The artist paints with a focus on colour and form, utilizing the natural texture of oil paint as a way to build up volume and shadow in an image.
The artist herself cites Tom Thomson and other Group of Seven artists as an influence to her painting style. I think this influence is evident both in Laurie’s slightly gestural style, and in the artist’s choice of colour palette -- while Laurie often selects saturated, bright colours for her work, she’s also adept with the use of more subdued earth tones, a palette that lends a sense of gravity to certain works.
In our previous feature of Laurie’s work with overlapping colour planes, we looked at the artist’s Cloudspotting series. In this series, the artist focuses her artistic eye on the sky above, capturing peaceful, soft-edged views of white clouds against blue skies. There’s a beautifully meditative quality to these pieces.
