Laura Wormell
Laura Wormell photographed by Julian Hawkins
Many of your works, like Threshold and Hot Gas Hellcat, seem to merge surreal and introspective elements. What draws you to these themes, and how do they reflect your perspective on intimacy and vulnerability?
Laura - I know I respond most to works that reveal vulnerability, whether that be intentional or not. Perhaps it’s a misplaced mothering instinct, my empathy kicks in. I went to see a concert last night of Max Richter’s Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Reworked. It’s a towering piece of music, it has all the virtuoso themes from the original but pulled apart and reordered.
Aside from my own reaction to the music - a piece that manages to be both so recognisable it almost becomes quotidian and yet deeply profound - I found myself imagining the joy and the sorrow of performing this to an audience. No matter how masterful the musicians are, you can see the effort and the concentration, the wordless communication between the ensemble, the bow hairs breaking during the violent passages, the joke between the cellists when they turn the page too soon, the pride across the face of the solo violinist upon completing a consummate passage in the shiniest patent leather shoes. The performance is an attempt to be perfect and yet it is immeasurably more moving by the nature of it being live with the character and nuance of the performers and the moment in time.
Your paintings often feature subtle, emotive colour palettes and intriguing figurative compositions. Could you share a bit about your approach to colour and form and how you see these elements contributing to the atmosphere of your pieces?
Laura - I learnt to play instruments as a child and music has continued to be a very important part of my life. Like making music, colour is sometimes intuitive and emotional, sometimes more technically informed. The instinct is very closely related - there might be a quote or sample of colour that I want to incorporate in a more conscious way - like using a particular sound in a composition from somewhere else, whereas sometimes the choices are more irrational and emotional in the same way as having a fondness for the key of D flat major. Leading on from this, I approach form and composition in a similar way - I very rarely work on multiple paintings at once - unless there is some serious drying time to be got around. Each painting has its time and its tempo which is unavoidably bound up in my own preferences for that period.
Your art often invites the viewer into a personal, almost dreamlike world. How do you find the balance between personal storytelling and creating open interpretations for your audience?
Laura - I read an interview with the writer Alberto Manguel in which he describes the reader as the real author of a text. The writer indeed writes, but the words “remain in a sort of limbo… until whatever has been written is transformed by the eye of the reader into whatever the reader sees in it”. Anyone who makes anything - painting, music, dance, poetry - is desperate to communicate something. But there is always a failure to be able to, by the tools we have available, which creates a gap between the maker and the viewer. This miscommunication or approximate translation is where the most interesting stuff is. It means a work can have life again once it is completed and leaves the studio.
To use another reading analogy, I have read Jane Eyre at multiple times in my life since my first encounter with it when I was about 14. It’s a very different book for me now. Painting is the same, the act of making the work and the thoughts that drove me to do it are completed once it leaves the studio. My own relation to the object I made is also transformed - opened by the passing of time.
With your background in both formal art education and the immersive Turps Studio Programme, how have these experiences influenced your work and development as an artist?
Laura- The Slade was an incredible place to be, I met life long friends there who continue to be important influences in both life and art. However, I was very young (like most) when I went to the Slade - and so inexperienced. I hadn’t learnt how to study properly on my own yet, and was painfully lacking in confidence to ask the right questions. Turps felt like a second chance to really engage in my work and learn about my place in my own painting. I had spent a decade after graduating from my BA deepening my inquiry into painting so was in a great position to broaden my knowledge without fearing a loss of moorings.
Laura Womell - Untitled 4
Monotype on card
24 x 19 cm
I was very drawn to your exhibition I Am Your Creature at Asylum Studio over the summer. The intricate fonts and human figures that morph into letters create a fascinating dialogue between body and symbol. Could you share your thoughts on what inspired this exploration of text as an abstract element within the figurative realm, and how you feel the interplay between these forms impacts the viewer’s experience of both the image and its meaning?
Laura - Text had been lingering around in my work for a few years before I began making the work for I Am Your Creature. I had been struggling to truly turn letters into shapes - the words always felt like a didactic message which would exert influence over the figurative aspects of the painting they were on - there is the clue, my use of ‘on’ shows that they felt like a separate entity to the rest of the ‘image’. I really wanted to find a way to make the letters part of the image and vice versa. I had been researching alphabets for sometime and came across a 16th century human alphabet from Bologna that I couldn’t get out of my mind. I started to adapt the figures to suit my needs and so the work began to take shape.
Through the convergence of symbols and imagery, I wanted to see how these fundamental elements of human communication intertwine and influence perception and raise questions about how meaning is constructed and conveyed.
I’m fascinated by the idea that letters, as basic units of language, carry both abstract and concrete meanings, influenced by their form and the context in which they are presented. Simultaneously I’m interested in the role of imagery in communication, and the interplay between the seen and the read.
There was a visitor to the show at Asylum Studios that was very cross that he couldn’t make out what the paintings ‘said’. They were even more incensed that the titles didn’t necessarily illuminate any further. I tried to explain that they weren’t signs or information boards but rather paintings to be looked at, and ‘meaning’ was to be gained this way. In the end, I gave in and read the quotes to the visitor as we walked around the gallery. I don’t think once I had revealed the words it made any difference, they were still just as cross! I’m fascinated by this demand we have of imagery and symbols to generate meaning - when really we as the viewer hold the key.