The Anna Lamar Switzer Center for Visual Arts presents
Lauren Woods: DREAM STATE on view in the Lamar Studio Gallery from
August 16th, 2021, until December 10th, 2021.
Lauren Woods is an artist whose practice and creative research explores concepts of mythic time across various mediums such as painting, video, and dance performance. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Lauren received her MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art after completing her BA in studio art at Spring Hill College. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Art in the Department of Art & Art History at Auburn University, where she teaches figure drawing and painting. She has shown work regionally at the Huntsville Museum of Art, the Mobile Museum of Art, the Jule Collins Smith Museum Art, and the Gadsden Museum art, and exhibited nationally in galleries across the US. Her most recent projects combine her experience as a former ballet dancer with her current painting practice. Presently, she is collaborating with choreographers and musicians to develop immersive art experiences.
The concept of mythic time is contemplated visually through paintings that combine fabricated and observed reality with mutable narratives, much like what happens when we are in a dream state. Mythic time is broadly defined as a perpetual present outside of the linear perception of time, an abstract awareness where everything is eternally happening all at once. Images and narratives envisioned in this ambiguous space of mythic time exist between conflicting states, such as informed innocence, playful seriousness, perverse prettiness, clandestine sincerity, and contemporary nostalgia.
Specific imagery and themes explored in these works include the reclining masculine nude seen through the feminine gaze and experience; woman as an archetypal hunter in control of her destiny and the world around her; and envisioned environments inspired by the atmosphere of theater where nature and magic can coexist. With these images, Woods highlights the tension of visual perception and remembered inner knowing, inviting viewers to project their own experiences and symbolism onto the work, creating a living dialogue between the painting and the viewer.
Artist lecture by Lauren Woods at 3 pm, Thursday, August 26th, followed by dual reception with the PSC Art Faculty exhibition on display in the Switzer Gallery from 5-7:30 pm.
The Switzer Center is open Monday-Thursday 8 am-5 pm, Friday 8 am-4 pm. Closed national, state, and college holidays.