Reviews

Commissioned text from 'In the Stillness' 
By Sam Lock

As the world thunders around us the paintings of Laura Menzies provide breathing space. Drawn initially by their pervading tranquillity, they talk to us in whispers we half hear, suggest memories we can only half recall, turning themselves into intrigues we can’t walk away from.

Her paintings are not powered by immediacy and gesture, but rather a slow palimpsest of painted layers applied and stripped away, elusive palettes, chalky, waxed or impasto surface that traps and holds marks within itself. There is a beauty and poignancy inherent in this work, a beauty of faded flowers, the passing of time, the poetry of stillness. These works take on a life of their own, they seem to have always been here, and thus make us aware of our own presence and temporality.

Menzies’ Cornwall studio and its context of natural change and energy is embedded in her practice; the light, seasons and permanence of her surroundings is mirrored in the character of her work as rhythms, patterns, surfaces. Her painting practice is a synthesis of opposites; an aggressive elegance, a floating gravity, a fleeting forever. This quality adds an acidity or electricity that breaks the sense of harmony or balance within the works. There is an undercurrent of instability and disruption here, where things that at first seem to be coming together might be falling apart.

They are a mix of strength and delicacy, confidence and uncertainty; it is these tensions that are the substance of her work. A mindful and thoughtful personality, Laura uses painting as an extension of her meditations and spirituality. Clearly connected to Abstract discourse these paintings are best seen as experiential, slowing us down into deep breaths so the paintings can unfold themselves to us slowly, making us aware of ourselves, our inner senses, our wandering minds.


Artists Introduction
By Sarah Ryan, Founder of New Blood Art

'Laura Menzies' abstract canvases seem to capture fleeting, intangible emotions: like the experience of simultaneously realising and forgetting on the point of sleep, or the bewildering feeling of deja vu perhaps. Like Turner's epic, formless vortexes, layers of translucent paint, applied and scratched away, suggest ideas just waiting to be born from the ether. The titles of her works similarly lead the viewer to consider the intangible relationships between forces and shapes yet to take definite form. Inspiring calm philosophy and contemplation, these paintings improve the atmosphere of any room'.