Biography
Laurie McClave has been drawing and painting obsessively since she was a young child. Growing up in California in the 60s and 70s her extended family was full of artists, free-thinking Mad magazine readers and a sprinkling of Catholic comedians. She dabbled in Drama, Clothing design and sculpture in the 70s and 80s before deciding to really get down and Paint….
She attended The San Francisco Art Institute where she earned an honors studio spot. While there she concentrated on figure drawing and painting and received her BFA in Painting in 1994.
After graduating and exhibiting work around the Bay area and across the country she relocated to the Pacific Northwest where she is painting and raising her own free-thinking family.
Her work is currently exhibited at Pop Gallery in Santa Fe, Tasty Boutique Gallery in Seattle and Red Raven Gallery, a cooperative she runs and curates in Port Townsend, Wa. Laurie mentors young unknown local artists in the business and marketing end of the art world at her new art space, featuring those that would normally not be able to get a foot in the door at a conventional gallery. The Red Raven is run as a cooperative venture and she is able to give these new artists the tools needed to move forward with their work.
Laurie’s “Pantheon of Women” is a play on iconic representations of how feminine sexuality in art has been perceived throughout history. Her paintings are suffused with color, symbolism, and animal imagery, and her style is slightly surreal with a tongue in cheek sexual edge.
“Painting is and always has been a way to express my feelings and views of the world to others. I create a world of emotions with paint and brush and the women I paint are all different renderings of my subconscious and a feminine connection to the world we live in. I like to paint strong characters, and drawing from culture, both popular and ancient, I portray what is going on in the current atmosphere both politically and spiritually. My current work in the Soldier girls’ series is a mix of the old and new, traditional and non-traditional elements that I have experienced personally and studied at length.”
