Laura McClanahan, MFA, holds a Master’s Degree of Fine Art in Studio Art from Maryland Institute College of Art and a Bachelor’s of Art degree in Art & Architecture from Lehigh University. Her past teaching of organic architecture and current research into sacred geometry feed her professional outdoor studio practice in abstract painting. Laura has always sought her origins and found comfort in the natural world as a way of understanding and experiencing creation. She finds her true joy swimming in the ocean in Hawaii. Laura paints outdoors working with the earth to form flow patterns. She lets the sun dry and trap beneficial energies into the artwork with added crystals in permanent water-like resin. Going with the flow, her studio was re-located from the Hunterdon County, NJ river areas to the Puna, Hawaii lava flows after 2020 lockdowns. A certified sound healer, Laura is co-founder of Creative Frequencies and plays the Flower of Life gong and planetary chakra drums as part of sound healing meditations. Her soothing crystal paintings are presented at the Wandering Sage, Pahoa, HI, the Gemstone Gallery in Frenchtown, NJ, Simon Gallery in Morristown, NJ, The Drawing Room Gallery, in Cos Cob, CT, Ashok Jain Gallery in NYC and Saphira & Ventura Gallery in; NYC, Sao Paulo, Brazil and Cannes, France. Her experience in Art New York and Art Stage Singapore has gained her artwork international recognition.
About
Painting outside allows the sunlight energy and earth energy to merge onto the canvas. The water poured, flows around the crystals in the fundamental patterns of the meander, wave, drop and vortex spiral. Deeper Meanings of the gemstones reveal themselves to me as I work with them in my life through art and sound healing meditation. My paintings use non-toxic resin to shrink around the gems creating a mechanical force producing a piezo-electric charge. This one second pulsation like in a quartz watch, converts ions in the air to negative charges creating a beneficial environment around the painting, like being near a salt lamp or natural running water. These living paintings have healing energy. My painting practice started after my 2008 MFA degree at Maryland Institute College of Art. There I researched water patterns as metaphors for patterns of thought. With photographs and color darkroom photograms, I collected evidence and created images of constructed new life forms and imaginary cellular worlds. Now I find similar patterns in my paintings as with the sacred geometry, matrices and flow forms in gemstones.