About Laura
Laura Tryon Jennings is an award-winning New England artist with a resume boasting nationwide exhibitions and prominent collectors including, Grammy award-winning singer Bruce Hornsby, news reporter Joan Lunden and bestselling authors Mary Higgins Clark (estate), Carol Higgins Clark, and Christina Baker Kline.
Her work is also among the collections of Harvard University, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Merrill Lynch, University of Southern Indiana, Virginia Public Library, and HLM Venture Partners. Jennings was recently awarded the Margo-Gelb/Outer Cape Residency Consortium dune shack residency and the Fine Art Works Art Center artist residency given through the Copley Society of Art both in Provincetown, MA. She teaches oil painting at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, MA, Hope Floats Wellness and Healing Center in Kingston, MA, and in her Marshfield, MA studio. She also facilitates expressive art workshops for a variety of communities along with having a private practice working with individuals to help promote self-discovery or working through a particular issue.
Jennings is a South Shore resident who has fond memories of her childhood Cape Cod camping and adult summers in Brewster, MA. She is a member of the Copley Society of Art and North River Arts Society. Her formative years and university years were spent in the U.S. and England where she earned a BA at Westfield Sate University in Massachusetts and continued studying art at Trent University in England and Salve Regina University, Rhode Island.
PHOTO: Joe Reardon
Artist Statement
The underlying theme of the majority of my work is the tension between chaos and tranquility.
Most paintings project feelings of calmness, peacefulness, and reflection which hopefully cause the viewer to pause, look, and focus on the art and serenity within the moments of everyday life. I seek to prompt the message we ought to take time from our hectic pace to reflect and treasure life’s simplicity, if only for a moment. I find the complexity and intricacy of life and relationships intriguing and try to capture those feelings in my paintings. Each series has its own particular spotlight. For example the Bedroom Series reveals intimate and provocative scenes with particular focus on the power and authenticity which encompasses being vulnerable. The Cereal Series evokes a different feeling with a subtle innuendo playing out in each background pattern. This series captures the essence of family and fleeting morning moments, rendering a simple and quiet image belying lives that are never quite still. Throughout the series I use coffee cups, cereal bowls and assorted found materials as metaphors, reminding us of these smaller meaningful moments, which sometimes go unnoticed; of reflective mornings; and of course, fond childhood memories of your favorite cereal. My landscapes are vistas I’m attracted to for the sensory and meditative features they inspire as well as the invitation and reminder they cause to step back from life’s complexity and churning.
As a New Englander and avid colorist, my color palette has developed and evolved from strong seasonal and coastal influences offering a distinctive blend of hues and range of moods. My perspective is achieved by physically viewing objects or my subjects as though I am looking down at a puzzle, and connecting the shapes, that don’t appear to fit, but somehow work to complete a scene. I enjoy the use of both large and small canvases. My large canvas work allows me to be more physical and heighten the focus of objects and subjects within while my small canvas work allows for a more intimate, gem-like outcome. These influences and techniques combined with a lifelong passion result in my interpretation and expression of some of life’s magnetic moments.