Laurie McLachlan
Laurie McLachlan (b. Toronto, 1960) is an Oakville-based self-taught abstract painter working on large-scale acrylic pieces. McLachlan studied Jewellery and Metals at Georgian College in the early nineties and was a goldsmith for over 20 years. She has taught jewellery at a Cambridge Bay Arctic College in Nunavut and owned a jewellery business in Oakville for 17 years. She made the transition towards painting in 2019 when she began her sobriety journey and needed a more generous and expressive means of creating work. Her work deals with themes of isolation, community, and mental wellbeing. She aims to capture the broad range of her emotional experience through her colourful and energetic pieces, which range from expressions of rage and grief to meditations on water and the natural world. She is currently exhibiting at Summer & Grace Gallery in downtown Oakville, and has an upcoming show in the studio at Gairloch Gardens. She also volunteers as a peer mentor at Joseph Brant hospital in their DBT skills program, and has completed multiple courses in peer support, suicide prevention, and mindfulness.
“My work explores the connection between mental wellbeing, community, and isolation. My journey as an abstract painter began as my sobriety journey began, and the emotions and experiences that I suppressed with drinking began to reveal themselves on the canvas. The primary purpose of my work has always been catharsis and self-expression. Although my work is created in isolation, this process connects me to the world by bringing my internal landscape into form for others to witness. I naturalize the ups and downs of the human condition by holding them together in my artwork, and sharing my experiences openly. I am influenced by the abstract expressionist painters of the mid twentieth century but am constantly finding new forms and inspirations in my relationship with the natural world. My work as a peer mentor in mental health groups keeps me grounded in community and connects me to those who I feel can benefit from art-making the most.”