Check out Lauren Power’s Artwork

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Power.

Lauren, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
When I started making art, it was for the underground punk music scene of Houston. I enjoyed creating serious pieces to match the fast-paced and often angry nature of Houston’s music scene in the early 2000’s. My pieces were fervent and emotional, often calling upon themes of isolation and disenfranchisement.

In college I began to add more structure, including harsh line elements to contain often chaotic compositions. However, it wasn’t until I began working with high school art students, that I began to hone in on my own particular style. I really enjoyed being able to feed off the creative energy of youth while simultaneously inspiring them to create themselves.

We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
A lot of my work deals with exploring opposing relationships- beauty and ugliness, dark and light, etc. Sometimes this can take the form of inner organs intertwined with beautiful nature or harsh shadows combined with reflective elements. I am always trying to learn new mediums, whether it is woodburning, tattooing, marker, or embroidery. Lately I have been enjoying the process of art-making through destruction: burning wood to create designs or painting over existing work to create reversive videos. When I enter a project, I begin with loose ideas of the feeling I want to convey, lay down structure with micron and linework, then allow my paint to run loose and create itself. I feel this looseness of the paint adds whimsy to otherwise serious pieces. My colors are often bright and vibrant. When anyone asks my favorite color, I always tell them rainbow. Nothing about my work is subtle, I’m always trying to come up with new ways to convey imagery, like videos using light to reveal hidden messages and designs.

The sterotype of a starving artist scares away many potentially talented artists from pursuing art – any advice or thoughts about how to deal with the financial concerns an aspiring artist might be concerned about?
You don’t have to have fancy things to make beautiful art. I teach high schoolers who make incredible pieces using copy paper and crayola colored pencils. It’s about the motive behind the work. If you can’t challenge the medium, how can you challenge the content and application?

Contact Info:

• Email: lauren.power520@hotmail.com
• Instagram: @artistlaurenpower

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