Laurie alberts

My first creative incarnation was as a novelist and professor of creative writing. After publishing eight books, I started painting and never looked back. If my writing tended toward the grittily realistic, painting has permitted me to transcend the strictly representational in favor of the emotional content of landscapes I’ve inhabited or imagined.

Six months a year I row my 26’ long solo scull on a stretch of the Connecticut River running between Vermont and New Hampshire. The river – in all its seasons and permutations – often appears in my work. Painting and rowing are complementary: hard work, joy, and a sense of expansion from being immersed in the light and shapes of a real place I make my own through creating images.

I frequently use cold wax medium mixed with oil paint because it increases luminosity and its thickness and malleability allow for scraping, scratching, and the overlay of colors and textures. Its very imprecision creates possibilities–directions I might not have intended, images unforeseen, paths I want to follow.