Featured Artist Lauren Mantecón

Artist Lauren Mantecón creates a bridge between linear and dream time through her ephemeral abstract oils. See more of her portfolio by visiting her website.

 

 

Three hours before I heard my grandmother had died, I was asleep and dreaming of her.

 

 

She was skinny dipping in the light of the full moon in the lake at my grandparent’s summer cabin. Naked, with bare pearlescent skin which I imagined was soft as a seal’s fur, she rhythmically maneuvered in and out of the lake’s surface.

 

 

She flowed up and down and in and out of the deep, dark water, with the silvery moon as a backdrop. She popped her head up and smiled and gave me a wave as I stood on shore—a witness. I could feel the waves of love pouring from her to me. Then she was gone.

 

 

This dream was the beginning of many more to come; dreams of loved ones passing in our lifetime, a tear in the fabric between life and death. This would become the portal of entry to my life’s work—painting.

 

 

How do you visually translate such spiritual phenomena? How do you make the supposedly unreal real, in metaphoric language through color, atmosphere and symbol?

 

 

As an artist, I was birthed in the abstract language of the academic settings of the nineties. It was a time when formal considerations were separated from the personal. A time when I swallowed my internal beauty. I spent years bifurcating my spiritual connections and experiences from my art making. I truly believed I could separate them, but I couldn’t.

 

 

I would hide, shroud and blur my imagery till the language of paint took on a life of its own. Veils, mists, portals, vessels and orbs became the leitmotifs of my work. A resurrected presence of memory to tangible surface handling, usually in a large scale format to aid the connection between body, spirit and object. A place where “linear time” and “dream time” became one and the same.

 

 

I hold deep reverence for what can be felt but not seen. What I call the omnipresent force of spirit. I am a bridge maker in my art practice.

 

 

I am like the temperance card in the traditional tarot deck. An angel with wings, neither male nor female, standing with one foot in water representing the subconscious while the other is on dry land, the material world. The angel holds two cups, mixing waters in a diagonal line, defying gravity. A third thing is created in this magical act of alchemy. Lines are blurred, division and duality answered.

 

 

I believe we live in a time of a massive infusion of spirit energy. This inpouring of energy also lets in darkness, confusion and chaos. I want to carry the viewer along, serving as a steward of light through the paintings that I make.

 

Artist Lauren Mantecón invites you to follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

 

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