Art as Life: Laurie Zeszut Portraiture

My mind is full of pictures. It's my
job as a person with imagination
to offer a different perspective.
I choose to enchant.

"A Fertile Mind" Gouche on Black Arches, 40" x 30"

Inspired by the likes of Matisse, Picasso and Dufy, Laurie Zeszut is a self-taught painter. She first began her career when a friend encouraged her to attend a watercolor class after seeing the handpainted wrapping paper Zeszut had created for a birthday present. She had to fit her penchant for painting into the small bits of time that opened up in her life as a mother who was also juggling a career. It may be the very thing that has given Zeszut her confidently bold style.

Breaking the tendencies of the expected, gathering enough personality and character to set the stage for a play, Zeszut uses her gouache paint on black paper to startling effect. These are Alice in Wonderland scenes, full of a lively and breathtakingly helter-skelter style that can't help but light up a room.

It's a style that cheers without being frenetic, soothes without being dull. Far from it. There's a kinesthetic and visual power to Zeszut's paintings that makes her work a rare blend of passion and serenity. Though her objects may be outsized, her patterns asymmetrical, she nonetheless has the ability to infuse her landscapes with a palpable joy.

Of the subject matter of her paintings, Zeszut says: "I have an idea and I go with it. I make it up as I go along—a whole painting expands from one little idea." Those ideas have led Laurie Zeszut to a career as an accomplished and sought after contemporary painter, one who has caught the eye of collectors worldwide and earned her accolades and awards. Laurie Zeszut has chosen to enchant. Her paintings allow us to share in that enchantment.

There was a good woman whose life was askew.
She had four fine kids ages twelve thru twenty-two.

She cooked and she cleaned and she washed and she sewed,
'til one day she said, "Damn, my own row should be hoed."

So she called to the stars and the moon up above
and they answered, "Don't panic, paint is your love."

Here is a sample of some of her dreams . . .
and her heart is still bursting apart at the seams.

a detail from "The Art of Motherhood"

For me, art is
an action word.

In this photograph
I'm busy painting
"Butterfly Girl,"
a 130 foot mural
erected to camouflage
the rebuilding of
Santa Cruz, CA, after
the 1989 earthquake.

I'm an American housewife.
Some say sad, but not necessarily true. I've made it an artform. That's what smart women do. Rooms and halls, windows and doors, gigantic flowers in pots, flying carpets on floors, comfy big chairs, and tables that dance. That's what you'll find. As the saying goes, "It's all in the mind."

A photograph of Laurie superimposed on:
"A Room of Her Own," Gouache on Black Arches, 30" x 40"

This is a self-portrait of me painting a self-portrait.

Being an artist isn't a little part of me.
It's the way I do my whole life

This is how it has to be.
I cannot separate my life and my art.