Lauren Mantecon

I believe in the intelligence of beauty and have spent a majority of my life chasing this elusive ideal down as if I could swallow it whole and embody beauty from the inside out– and so- I paint.

I have been painting for some twenty years- and some moments I have touched that visceral sensation between what cannot be seen but can be felt- an invisible grace and beauty- where vision- dreamscapes and apparitions live. It keeps me coming back again and again, this search to touch those places from the inside out.

My family moved a lot. I spent the majority of my childhood moving between the East and West Coasts, negotiating the terrain of identity and place in the middle.

In my teens, we settled in southern California, where I followed the academic route in exploring my artistic aspirations. I earned a B.A in conceptual photography in 1989 then an MFA in painting in 1997. I spent many years after unwinding the academic voices in my head in search of my own personal narrative and authentic voice. It’s a process.

I currently live in New Mexico where I feel the large vistas of sky and red earth land serve as an anchoring point to the visual language I seek to represent.