The Blue Cockatoo Painting

Laura Wilkins is a visual artist based in Albuquerque, NM, working primarily in watercolors and oils to depict feathered creatures and memories of landscapes she once experienced. Her work is inspired by our connection to ocean and land and approaches artmaking as a meditative process. Laura uses methods influenced by East Asian calligraphy to paint realistic birds in her works. She began practicing mindfulness and meditation at a young age after being inspired by her mother’s books, which she began reading. This is still influencing her painting practice to this day. Laura renders her images with Chinese and Japanese paintbrushes, dipping them in watercolor as opposed to ink to obtain smooth, accurate linework. The birds appear loose but realistic in their expression, which transforms the viewers feelings by observing their unique character that Laura tries to represent. The most crucial elements in her painting process that will ultimately affect the outcome of each bird painting are movement and presence. She frequently uses salt on her watercolor paper, which changes how the paint feels as it dries and gives her images more dimension. She adopted the same approach while creating landscape works, where she focuses even more on the process rather than the outcome. The textured and abstracted world challenges Laura’s imagination and creates a balance with her other works that are more soft, fluid and representational. Her latest works include abstracted landscapes in oil on canvas, as an extension of her bird artworks. She refers to these as ‘ bird’s eye-view’ paintings. Laura is currently working out of her home studio in Denver, Colorado.