Artist's Statement - Laura Rice   “At the age of sixteen I failed out of typing class and found myself in an art class for lack of anywhere else to go.  In college, when I was lost and confused as to what course my life should take, I turned around to find art following me along like a happy puppy.  So here I am years later with a lawn so neglected friends refer to it as “old growth”.  My car is starved for practical attention, but instead is held together with duct tape and love.  The blackberries are so overgrown that I am convinced they will reach right in my window and pluck me from my bed and carry me away.  And later when officials investigate, all they will find is a house crawling with morbidly whimsical portraiture, paintings of green skinned harlots, drooping houseplants, and big-bellied angels. The past few years my exploration with acrylic paints and chalk pastels has focused on portraits of people both real and imaginary.  Through this figurative work I have been searching for the ties that connect us all.  My interest lies in human dignity and fragility, in our hope filled sadness and in our hard earned joy.  It is each person’s uniqueness that makes a portrait entertaining, but it is our sameness that makes a painting resonate with our core. Painting feeds my soul.  It nourishes me with the strangest diet of mystery, frustration fulfillment, powerlessness, indulgence whimsy, and wonder.  I visually devour the world the way a small child might consume a whole tray of cupcakes.  And all I can think is, “MORE, MORE, MORE!”  Please just give me another beautiful sunset, another withered woman waiting for the bus, and more friends willing to sit still and tell their tales while I admire the light falling across their lumpy, bumpy, beautiful faces.”