Lorelei Sowa

I am a formally trained painter from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) with a BFA. My work is inspired by my experiences, the landscapes, structures, and the people around me. Entwined in the natural world are human experiences. I enjoy combining elements of the natural world with human feelings and emotions to tell a story.

 

Representation is a beginning framework; abstraction and freedom make the specific more universal. I love allowing the paint to guide my decision-making. Paint's inherent freedom is exciting and provides a communication vehicle for exploring the world in a way limited by language.  Layers of mistakes show human thought in a way reproduction cannot. Mistakes and chance begin my art, while value, contrast, and discernment principles finish it. I love playing with color and using it to set a tone or mood for my landscapes. I am most inspired by the places I have traveled or experienced. Humans have a specific and universal story.  I feel a piece is successful when I merge the past with the present and connect a particular place with a universal feeling. I hope that, like a good book, my work contains a narrative that, to some degree, you can get lost in.

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"Imperfection is, in some way, essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect as part of it is decaying, part nascent. And in all things that live, there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life but sources of beauty. To banish imperfection is to banish expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed.

~John Rushkin

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