A is for Art featuring Laura Dawe



Laura Dawe is a local legend, who, last year studied full time at Dal (where she was the arts editor for the Gazette ) as well as wrote and directed her first feature film. The film was made at the lowest cost possible with the help of an amazing crew who worked for free, funding raised by the sale of her paintings, and by insane parties she and friends like Chris Foster threw.


Laura Dawe stuck a needle in my arm, repeatedly, over three years ago leaving me with an inked heart on my wrist that represents a lot to me including the beginning of our beautiful friendship.


It's the hardest and the easiest thing to be friends with Laura. No mater how socially anxious I am, she, the host of the biggest party, will stick by my side making me laugh till it hurts to breath and then... we DANCE! She is a doer and does everything she sets out to do whether it ends well or not, it was all meant to be. And as a friend you stand there in awe as she weaves her magic, both inspiring and intimidating. Inspiration pours out of her skin and walls of her house and you get surrounded in the haze of ideas and productivity. Her drive is intimidating for anyone lacking, she accomplishes more in a month then most do in a year or two or three. There is no separation between artist and work, her fantasies become a fictional reality she reenacts through words that either stick to the page or are played out on screen. Her friends become paintings, her stick-and-poke subjects become friends. The more you know Laura the more you see her work as an ongoing visual diary and even if the subjects in some paintings are from found photos you know she would say 'Hey' to everyone of those people if they were to pass her on the street.


Laura is currently hard at work completing post production on her film Light is the Day which is premiering at The Atlantic Film Festival September 24th, 9:25pm at Park Lane. I am SO PROUD of all her accomplishments (this one may be the topper) and I am so happy to feature her on this blog.



Dear Laura,
The spectrum of your creations is wonderfully broad, it seems you have no limitations. What elements visible or invisible connect your body of work?

No painting, poem, video or photograph makes sense to me until the colours figure out. After that, in one way or another, it's all just composition: placement, amount, repetition.

I hope that the invisible connecting element is apparent, but who knows....?
It's appreciation. We (you and me and everyone we know) are the luckiest people in history. We won the craps shoot through no real merit of our own. The worst thing we can do is take it for granted that we work so little for so much while everyone else has worked so much for so little. I try to paint the beauty, or to capture it on video. We should cup it in our eyes and hands. It's fleeting. It can't last. Rainbows (or, orgasm arches as I call them) over disillusioned crowds, portraits of my friends with their eyes covered by gorgeous messes of masks, these are, pathetically, my attempts.



xoxo thanks Laura!

2 comments:

  1. I instantly got the feeling that I want to see this movie, before I even realized it was Lauras. I miss you Natalie, hope everything is well in Canada. xoxo /Elin

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