Toronto artist Lauren Pelc-McArthur creates delicious paintings and digital works that sparkle with electricity and energy. These paintings reference the artificial and digital world, as well as employing one of our favourite colour palettes: neon!
Her works wonderfully sit between abstraction and representation, creating an enjoyable tension. For example, "Untitled" focuses on colour and texture, and is so juicily painted we can't help but crave birthday cake icing. However, "Foxy Nox Truss" brings in representation by incorporating line work that references neon lighting that winds across the canvas. The gradient of these lights gives them three-dimensionality, which delightfully contrasts with the fast, less rendered brushstrokes behind them. Artificial colour choices connect the physical with the digital in Lauren's practice, and she is able to effectively create the same visual languages that appear in her paintings through her digital imagery, and vice versa. The knowledge of these digital images adds a fascinating interdisciplinary quality to her work.
Not only do we find Laruen Pelc-McArthur's paintings so aesthetically stunning, they also comment on the way technology has permeated our lives, bringing them front and centre in contemporary culture. We're excited to see the next transformation of this body of work!
