Laurel Wetzork to Exhibit in
December in United Arts Lobby Space
December in United Arts Lobby Space
Green Creek Winery by Laurel Wetzork
Laurel Wetzork
Laurel Wetzork comes from a family of artists and has been drawing and painting since she was a young child. She spent many years involved in show business but since 2006 has focused on almost exclusively on painting full time. Laurel works en plein air. Many artists feel this painting technique is the only way to truly capture the beauty and colors of landscapes. French Impressionist painters such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir advocated en plein air painting, and much of their work was done or started outdoors. Laurel has studied under master pastelist and landscape painter Albert Handell. “One of my great concerns is the disappearing natural world and its old ways, especially that of the family farm,” she says. “Family farms are not only threatened by big agribusiness but also by our growing population and its demands. Housing tracts expand outward and swallow up not only family farms, but pristine forest, ocean front, and meadows. Long-time farmers and landowners not only receive constant pressure to sell to developers, but keeping a farm going is extremely hard work. I grew up on a small family farm near four other families in Riverside, California, surrounded by rocky hills and wilderness. That land is now a subdivision in a pollution-clogged city. Life is full of many contrasts; beauty and ugliness, good and evil, joy and desperate grief. Out on location I am drawn to the beauty and contrasts I see in nature: the subtle contrasts of a two value scene to the more dramatic contrasts found in a full range of values; the contrast of a dead or dying tree with vibrant spring grasses; and the many contrasts found in color itself. I paint outdoors on location, where colors and contrasts live. I finish the work in my studio.”
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