You know how this story goes – there’s a wolf, or a woodsman, and the evil intentions of a powerful foe. There’s a journey, and an adversary, but friends in places you never thought to look. How is it then that every time this story gets told, across generations and centuries and millennia, it is as fresh as it is familiar?
Whenever I approach a new painting to try and tell my story it starts with something old: A manuscript painstakingly painted using pigments ground by hand; the carved details on a portal transitioning you into a rarefied perspective; a pattern made with compass and rule to explain the path of the stars; an engraving with complex symbols of forgotten magic encoded using unfamiliar letterforms. Nature provides the best guides for this kind of journey, and the birds and animals, plants and elements that make their way into my paintings all have helped me stay on the path and find my way. Then I take what I learn from these lessons and distill the essence, using symbols old and invented, dreams shared and unfamiliar, and I tell my story as if it belongs to all of us.
This is what I endeavor to do with every new creation – it is my journey, my personal quest.
It is the greatest of privileges when you find someone who understand the story you are telling, whether that story is told visually or in writing, and to have them recognize it as their own. In the end, I create the work that I do because I absolutely need to, but it is my hope that you will find something here that speaks to you in an old and familiar way. – LL