ARTTYCO TALKS
For Laura Bauer, painting is an act of openness and transformation. She embraces chance, layers, and texture to shape subconscious landscapes where memory shifts, mistakes become discoveries, and intuition turns the unseen into presence.
ARTTYCO TALKS |
EPISODE #19: LAURA BAUER
1. Your process begins without a predetermined idea, letting the materials guide you. What does that state of openness feel like for you, and how do you know when to follow the lead of the medium versus your own intuition?
L: Beginning without a set idea feels like stepping into a space of possibility -- both grounding and unpredictable. There's a quiet trust in letting the wax, pigment, and heat suggest the first moves. I listen closely to what the medium wants to do-- how it drips, resists, or fuses -- and in those moments, I let it lead.
My intuition steps in when I sense a deeper rhythm or emotional pull in the work, something that feels uniquely mine to pursue. It becomes a conversation: the medium offers surprises, and my intuition shapes them into meaning.
2. Encaustic painting allows for layers of color and content to emerge only over time. How do you navigate the process of revealing and concealing in this medium. What do you look for in those buried layers?
L: In Encaustic painting, I see revealing and concealing as a dialogue between intention and discovery. Each layer carries traces of what came before -- sometimes I choose to let those histories emerge, and other times I bury them, knowing they still shape the surface even if unseen.
I look for the textures, fractures, and moments of color that break through unexpectedly, because those become metaphors for memory and transformation.
What lies beneath often holds as much meaning as what is visible, and navigating that tension is what keeps the process alive and deeply personal.
3. Your background in sculpture and ceramics seems to influence the way you approach painting. How does working across 2-D and 3-D media shape the textures, forms, and spatial depth in your encaustic works?
L: My background in sculpture and ceramics deeply informs how I approach encaustic painting. I don't see the surface as flat -- I see it as a space to build, carve, and layer, almost like working in relief.
The wax allows me to shape textures that echo clay's malleability and to create forms that suggest depth beyond the surface.
Moving between two -- and three -- dimensional practices has taught me to think spatially, so even in painting I am considering weight, volume, and presence.
Encaustic becomes a meeting point where painting holds the physicality of sculpture and the intimacy of touch from ceramics
4. You’ve spoken about ‘mistakes’ sparking new ideas. How do you personally define a mistake in your process, and in what ways do you turn those unexpected outcomes into opportunities for discovery?
L: I don't see mistakes as failures, but as shifts in direction -- moments when the material resists my intention and insists on its own voice.
A "mistake" might be a crack, a burn, or a layer that obscures more than I had planned, but those disruptions often open a door I wouldn't have thought to enter. Instead of erasing them, I lean into the accident, letting it guide me toward new textures, new rhythms, or even new meaning in the work.
These moments of surrender often hold the greatest discoveries, because they remind me that creation is a partnership between control and release.
5. Shape and color create what you call a “subconscious landscape.” What emotional or sensory resonances do you hope viewers find in those layers—what does familiarity feel like when recognition is only partial?
L: When I speak of a subconscious landscape, I'm thinking about the way shape and color carry memory without needing to be literal.
I hope viewers feel a sense of resonance -- something that stirs but can't be fully named, like recalling a dream or recognizing a place you've never been. Partial familiarity feels to me like standing at the edge of memory: it invites curiosity, reflection, and sometimes even comfort in the unknown.
I want the layers to hold that tension -- where abstraction becomes a mirror for the viewers own inner landscape, allowing meaning to surface in deeply personal ways.
