Laurel Bustamante’s Flowers from Mars July 30 – September 3, 2016
Lora Schlesinger Gallery presents Flowers from Mars, a series of small-scaled paintings by Laurel Bustamante. Like Persian miniatures, Bustamante’s paintings are elaborate and enticing. Flowers from Mars combines carefully painted human-interpreted flora with otherworldly environments. The environments are constructed with washes of gouache and acrylic paint to create ethereal and atmospheric settings, where microscopic gardens float and flourish. Laurel finds abstraction to be more poetic in expressing nature than realism. Researching botanical motifs found in history is an important part of her process. By combining and contrasting highly rendered flora within atmospheric and abstract settings, she is exploring the schism in the human brain between our delight in nature and our global inability to maintain it. Each painting develops organically without a predetermined plan. The contrast between vaporous washes and tiny brushwork is extreme and requires a slow, contemplative process. Laurel Bustamante received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Southern Oregon University, Summa Cum Laude. In 2013, she was the finalist for the Portland Art Museum Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, in Portland Oregon. She was awarded the Crater Lake National Park Artist Residency in 2001 and the Artist on Location Project in Antilles, Netherlands in 2000.
Nightflowers (detail)
Nightflowers, 2015 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Flowers from Mars, 2015 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Flowers from Mars 2, 2016 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Utopia, 2015 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Seabed, 2015 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Beneath the Veil, 2016 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Shifting in the Blue Canal, 2016 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Drifting into the Celadon Sea, 2016 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Dusk and Dawn, 2015 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Elegy: Blue Milk and Honeythorn, 2015 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Elusive Dream of Elsewhere, 2016 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Valles Marineris, 2016 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Strange Symmetries in the Golden Undertow, 2016 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Falling Gardens, 2015 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Lost Garden No. 6, 2015 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
Exodus, 2016 acrylic and gouache on panel 10 x 8�
SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2016 2014 2013 2011 2010 2009 2001 2000 2000 1999 1999 1993
Flowers from Mars, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA The Listening Stillness, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA Lost Gardens, Augen Gallery, Portland, OR Nightbirds, REM Gallery, San Antonio, TX Birds, Davis and Cline Gallery, Ashland, 0R Nocturnes in India, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA Connections: Laurel Engel & Eileen Bowie, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR Curaçao: To Return to the Sea, Davis and Cline Gallery, Ashland, OR Signals from a New Order, Davis and Cline Gallery, Ashland, OR New Work, Thorndike Gallery, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR Heresy, Central Art Gallery, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR Lifeblood, Los Medanos Gallery, Los Medanos College, Pittsburg, CA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2016 2016 2014 2012 2012 2012 2010 2009 2002 2001 2001 2000 2000 2000 1999 1998 1997 1995 1993 1992 1992 1991 1991 1989 1988
Salon: Portland 2016 Biennial, The Studio Visits, Disjecta, Portland, OR Exploring Reality, Schneider Museum, Oregon Center for the Arts, Ashland, OR New Work by Gallery Artists, Augen Gallery, Portland, OR Group Exhibition: Gallery Artists, Augen Gallery, Portland, OR Summer Group Show, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA Smalls, Davis and Cline Gallery, Ashland, OR Small Works, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA The Toy Show, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA Crater Lake Centennial Exhibition, Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR Abstraction 2001, Davis and Cline Gallery, Ashland, OR Taste of Ashland, Davis and Cline Gallery, Ashland, OR Four Ashland Artists, Davis and Cline Gallery, Ashland, OR Southern Oregon University Alumni, Center for the Visual Arts, Ashland, OR Introductions, Davis and Cline Gallery, Ashland, OR Exposicion Grafica Entre Dos Paises, Sala Polivalente, University of Guanajuato, GTO, Mexico Recent Graduates ‘98, Blackfish Gallery, Portland, OR En Route, Lavern Krause Gallery, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR The Mask Show, Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR Contemporary Collections on Loan, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Rental Gallery, San Francisco, CA Small Paintings, Joan Roebuck Gallery, Lafayette, CA Fifth Annual Emeryville Art Exhibition, Emeryville, CA; Regina Almaguer, curator Kala Institute Annual Art Exhibition, Berkeley, CA Celebration of the Arts 1989, Emeryville, CA, Carl Worth, curator, Berkeley Art Center Art: The Other Industry, Emeryville, CA
AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES
2013 2001 2000
Finalist, Portland Art Museum Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, Portland, OR Crater Lake National Park Artists in Residence Program, Crater Lake, OR Artist on Location Project, (residency) Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles
EDUCATION Southern Oregon University, BFA, Ashland, OR, 1999 San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, 1986 San Francisco Academy of Art, San Francisco, CA, 1983 BIBLIOGRAPHY Exploring Reality, (Cat.) Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR, 2016 Laurel Bustamante: The Listening Stillness, (Cat.) Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, 2014 Laurel Bustamante presents ‘Lost Gardens,’ Editor’s Pick, Portland Monthly Magazine, April 4, 2013, www.portlandmonthlymag.com Richard Speer, Laurel Bustamante: Lost Gardens, Willamette Week, April 17, 2013, www.wweek.com Museum Announces Artists for Contemporary Northwest Art Awards: Q&A with Curator Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, Portal: Portland Art Museum Magazine, Portland, OR, Vol, 2, Issue 2, January 2013; 15 Vickie Aldous, Gallery Celebates Tiny Detailed Art, Ashland Daily Tidings, June 1, 2012, www.ashlandtidings.com Laurel Bustamante: Night Birds, Women and Their Work: Sister Space, January 24, 2011, www.womenandtheirwork.com Laurel Bustamante: Nightbirds, Glasstire (Texas Visual Art) February 11, 2011, www.glasstire.com Vickie Aldous, Birds in the Night, Ashland Daily Tidings, Ashland, OR, October 2010; 4 Julie Vandenberg, The Work of Laurel Bustamante, Sneak Preview, Ashland, OR, October 1010; 7 Jody Zellen, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Artscene, Los Angeles, CA, September 2009; 15 B. Allen Bayard, Artist on Location Project, The Ashland Daily Tidings, Ashland, OR, September 2000, 3 Regina Almaguer, 1991 Fifth Annual Emeryville Exhibition of Art, (Cat.) Bachus Press, Inc., Berkeley, CA, October 1991; 14 Jennifer Crohn, Art as a Civic Virtue, The East Bay Guardian, Oakland, CA, November 1991; 51 Carl Worth, Emeryville Celebration of the Arts 1989: 3rd Annual Art Exhibition:“Art, the Other Industry, (Cat. Ill.) Photon Press, Emeryville, CA, 1989; 10 Robert Tomilson, Art, the Other Industry: Emeryville Exhibition 88 (Cat.) Albany Press, Albany, CA, 1988; 6 Robert Tomilson, “Emeryville 1st Annual Art Exhibition: Art, the Other Industry” (Cat. Ill.) Albany Press, Albany, CA, 1987; 12