The paintings of Laura Duerwald are built from layers of paper, salvaged fabric, botanical dyes, pigment, and wax, creating sensual surfaces and improvisational geometric compositions. Pattern and repetition are potent sources of meaning – they encourage slow meditative connections of mind and body, like an awareness of one’s breath. Their rhythms enable constantly shifting internal and external conditions to be embedded in Duerwald’s process and embodied in her work.
Duerwald received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University before moving to New York City, where she worked as an illustrator and graphic designer. Later, turning her focus to painting, she studied at the Art Students League in New York, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Marywood University. She has been awarded fellowships and artist residencies at the NES Foundation in Skagaströnd, Iceland, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts. Her work has been shown in solo and two-person exhibitions, as well as national and international group shows, and is held in numerous private collections throughout the United States. Duerwald is represented by Dimmit Contemporary Art in Houston, Texas, Tew Galleries in Atlanta, Georgia, and Corey Daniels Gallery in Wells, Maine. She works and resides in the foothills of the Endless Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania.