Laura Petka

Laura's love of painting began at a young age, and carried through to a six-year position as Director at a high-end art gallery in Dallas. After the birth of her second baby, and with a dream of creating more accessible, yet still high-end original pieces for collectors like her own family, Laura began painting more seriously. A year later, they had the thrilling surprise she was pregnant with twins but shortly after found out one of the twins would have a critical illness.

After the twins were born prematurely, Hayes was hospitalized most of his first year of life and endured five surgeries. Although painting took a backseat during this chaotic time, the God-given miracle of his recovery deepened her faith in a life-changing way. Laura focused her efforts on recovering her family from this challenging time for the next couple years before getting back to painting seriously.

The ever-oscillating emotions that resulted from small victories and fearful uncertainty, the duality of calm and chaos, and that unique blend of grief and joyfulness ultimately became the foundation and inspiration for Laura’s body of work.

Each viewer can sense that contrast not only in medium and texture (layers of paint or sand paired with serene smoothn...