John W. Lawson

Colorado Springs, CO

(b. 1945, Los Angeles)

My work is constantly evolving, changing as my concepts and subject matter change.  I am always learning and experimenting, can still be surprised and delighted by what happens in my most recent work.  I have found a way of being with my work that allows me to see myself and my own mysteries reflected in every piece.  My process is simple.  I start with a shape, a color, a general idea. Each shape,  each color suggesting what should come next and so on, until I feel it is balanced and complete.  Driven by intuition and guided by artistic experience, my use of a variety of materials allows me the freedom to access this process.

Passages

My newest series, Passages, is inspired by images seen in abandoned garment district warehouses frequented by myself and fellow art students.  A deserted dress factory loft, soft amber afternoon sunlight through vaulted, age worn window panes. Dust specked swirls of light rays catching shadowed hints of old lace, yellowed cotton formed gowns, bits of fabric drifting in semi-dark tableaus of decaying, mysterious evidences of another time and space. It all invoked in me a kind of sad nostalgia for lives somehow tied in  memory to these buildings. The discarded, ignored invisible markers of moments spent and forgotten.

These are the poetic ghosts that haunt the creative inspirations of my new work. – John Lawson