About Laurie Avadis
Laurie Avadis was born in Leeds in 1961. The son of a clothes designer and milliner, Laurie grew up initially amid stark and evolving countryside and latterly the urban landscape of North London and the seaside resorts in Southend and Brighton. "I have always been interested in the ways we fit into our ever changing environments with the animals we share our lives with. I like to think I'm working within the tradition of expressionist and post impressionist painting whilst at the same time exploring the limitless possibilities of form, seeking to evoke a sense of the colour, flow and the power of nature and human interaction within it. I developed a love of mixed media and pastels painting in the fields and villages of the Loire Valley. I explore my environment through my art, both the textures and power of the sea and the way the elements interact with the animals and people who occupy it. I have a real sense of the artistic history of my family in France, America and England and the way that the influences of those different styles interweave with my own. I paint within the beating heart of that tradition.'
"I work with oil pastels and chalk, with charcoal and pencils, with found and familial objects. I paint on paper and the pages of French books left to me by my family. I love everything that these materials and mediums offer and never know what will happen when I create. Art is a constant discovery. My subjects will present problems, clues, wrong turns and undiscovered beauty. I use my fingers and blot and change and imagine. I hang them in the house and live with them and sometimes they are finished and sometimes they still need to be discovered/ uncovered. Painting is like a snapshot of a beach, making marks in sand which are covered and changed and worn away. I paint in my studios in Felpham overlooking the sea and in my home in a remote field in the Loire Valley. I sketch when I travel and when I return. I paint like every new place is my home, every new environment is an undiscovered terrain, journies with never ending destinations."
"I work with oil pastels and chalk, with charcoal and pencils, with found and familial objects. I paint on paper and the pages of French books left to me by my family. I love everything that these materials and mediums offer and never know what will happen when I create. Art is a constant discovery. My subjects will present problems, clues, wrong turns and undiscovered beauty. I use my fingers and blot and change and imagine. I hang them in the house and live with them and sometimes they are finished and sometimes they still need to be discovered/ uncovered. Painting is like a snapshot of a beach, making marks in sand which are covered and changed and worn away. I paint in my studios in Felpham overlooking the sea and in my home in a remote field in the Loire Valley. I sketch when I travel and when I return. I paint like every new place is my home, every new environment is an undiscovered terrain, journies with never ending destinations."
