Laurie Wachter

Laurie Wachter is a third generation realist painter and photographer based in Northern California. Her portraits are most often of young women facing the world and their lives straight on. These portraits share with the viewer the combination of inner sensitivity and strong façade that is often at the subject's core. In some sense, this choice of subject and portrayal is a form of self-portrait.

Laurie also paints the beautiful Lusitano stallion and other animals. Lusitano horses in particular bring an amazing combination of sensitivity and spirit to those who come to know them.

Laurie says that "I love the smell of oil paints: their feel on my brush as I apply them to the canvas, the way the colors transform as I mix them on my palette, and how the layers of paint creates the feeling of age and texture. My paintings most often come to me in dreams or as sudden images while awake. From there, it’s a matter of using expressive brushwork and deep, rich colors to convey the spirit and detailed observation and measurement to capture the likeness."

Laurie's classical training was begun before she attended elementary school by her grandmother, Ivan Lenker, a locally prominent central Pennsylvania landscape painter. Laurie majored in Art at Dickinson College. She studied in the Atelier tradition, first learning Old Masters techniques for ten years under David Zuccarini, who taught the Maroger principles learned from Joseph Sheppard at the Maryland Institute of Art. In Chicago, she studied portraiture from life at Richard Halstead's School of Portrait and Figure Art for three years.

Sonoma County Art Trails Open Studios
Sonoma County Art Trails Preview exhibit at Corricks/My Daughter the Framer
Gravity of the Heart
Deck the Walls Exhibit Gallery One
Sonoma County Art Trails Preview exhibit Gallery One