Faces Of Love Original Artworks By Laurie Maves ART

Artwork for addressing grief and loss, that might also provide closure

I heard the song "You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals yesterday while sitting by the water having lunch. Boats were coming and going. My husband and I were taking a friend back to the airport after a short stay at our Florida home. This song always brings me back to Sherry.

Sherry was a dear friend of mine that who lost her battle with breast cancer a few years ago. While in the midst of her fight, I made a painting for her, and after her passing, I revisited the time lapse video I made simultaneously, which documented the process of the painting as it developed.

Hearing that song, yesterday, reminded me of this painting for Sherry, as well as the time lapse video. To this day, I tear up when I watch this video. I think about Sherry and what an amazing woman she was and how many children she helped as a social worker in the education system. She is missed dearly, but has also left a great legacy in the positive encouragements and support she offered the students she so selflessly worked with.

While living in Sarasota, I have connected with a couple of very dear women who work with grief and loss as well as provide opportunities and events that focus on the honoring and celebration of life. After seeing this video again, I realized that I need to let people know that this creative expression of love is something I can offer others going through their own grief and loss.

So today - I do just that. I offer this service, making the painting as well as the time lapse to clients who may be looking for alternative ways to honor and celebrate a loved one, as well as to add to the process of closure in an artful and creative way. If this is something that resonates with you, please let me know. We can begin the process of making something very special for you or your family today.

For more information, please visit my Laurie Maves ART website and go to the contact section to connect with me. Or simply leave me a message here. Thanks so much and have a beautiful Monday. 

#griefandloss #celebratelife #commissionedart

Migration Painting Exhibition underway in Florida

"March of the Flamingos, Stairway to Heaven"
acrylic on canvas
62"x48"
all rights reserved

Galleria Mare in Nokomis, Florida, will be hosting my series of 20 abstract paintings and mixed media works on canvas and paper from 11/16/17 through the end of January 2018.   All of the works are from my "Migration Series" - works which focus on themes of relocation, movement and life change. The colors of the plants and animals of the Gulf of Mexico and tropical environments can be seen in the works as well as reflections of weather, rain and even with the devastation of hurricanes, a realization that life can be illuminated with light and hope once again.

Galleria Mare

is located at

801 S. Tamiami Trail, Nokomis, Florida

(above Cafe Evergreen)

gallery website

"March of the Spoonbills"
acrylic on canvas
60"x30"
all rights reserved

"In Search of Tom Petty"
acrylic on canvas
30'x40"
all rights reserved

nothing to show except progress

Since moving to Sarasota, Florida I have been working diligently on my latest series of paintings all dealing with the theme of Migration. I hope you enjoy watching these mixed media works on paper roll out. All pieces are available for purchase either direct from the artist or via Vango, an online art gallery. Have a beautiful Sunday, and I hope what remains of the month of June is kind to you and filled with blessings. Here is a sampling to date:

all rights reserved by the artist, Laurie Maves Guglielmi of Laurie Maves ART

Laurie Maves ART on Migration and living in Sarasota, Florida

Recently I moved my painting studio and home from Denver, Colorado to Sarasota, Florida. I have been in Florida for about a month now, and the change in climate is truly the kind of change I was hoping for. Dramatic, thick, rich, colorful and predictably unpredictable. The sunshine state can be sunny, but it can also be rainy, cloudy, humid, but most undeniably colorful. And this is the one aspect which I have quickly grown to love in 30 short days. Everywhere you look, the greens of the plant life, the colors of the flowers, the movement of the birds and fish are all amazing to me. I am beginning to capture these in my latest and expanding series of works simply entitled, "Migration." 

"Migration Series #3," mixed media and collage on paper, 11"x15", 2017, all rights reserved by Laurie Maves ART

Following below is a short video that I created to introduce my work to my collectors via the Vango Art Online Gallery: Laurie Maves ART on Vango

I hope you enjoy my latest series of abstract paintings about color, life change and transition...and yes, migration

Laurie Maves ART's "Migration Series"

a pocket full of artful empathy

Historically I made paintings about people, places or things. Representational art that was always about somebody, somewhere or something. I never really cared for abstract paintings much, because I could never bother to understand them, or even try for that matter. 

My life went though a series of over hauls the past decade. Maybe that's just what happens to everyone, and it just feels "especially over-bearing," because when shit happens in your own life, you just tend to feel it more. And that's really what I needed and wanted to do, was to "feel more."

At this same time I started to tackle the "abstract" painting, because I wanted to understand it, wrap my head around it and was tired of being afraid of it. So I jumped right into painting color, without trying to paint a person, place or thing. Just color...and possibly dare I say "feelings?" 

And so this is where I have landed in my studio for the time being. When I am not being commissioned to make paintings about families, the Rocky Mountains, and poppies, I am making paintings about energy, color, love and empathy. 

A friend just recommended I pick up the book, "Tiny Beautiful Things, Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar," by Cheryl Strayed. Somehow my paintings, or my writing about my paintings evoked her to evoke me to get this book and get reading. And so I did. And the stories and concepts and ideas in this book of "advice," make all the sense in the world to me - and why I paint the way I have for the past decade. In trying to get real, to feel more, and to not be afraid of things I don't understand, has encouraged me to delve into the universe of painting abstracts. The larger the better. And oh how I love where I'm at right now with my "life's work," and am grateful to be a working artist every day that I'm still living and breathing.

I hope you enjoy my latest painting, "Dear Sugar, (A Pocket of Delights)." And thank you, Cheryl Strayed, for writing some real good shit.

"Dear Sugar, a Pocket of Delights" 60"x60" mixed media on canvas, 2017, all rights reserved by Laurie Maves ART

"Interstellar" A Timelapse Painting Transformation by Laurie Maves ART

This video is about the transformation of one of Laurie Maves' abstract paintings from 2015. The latter part of 2015 was one of the most difficult periods in her personal life. A time of disappointment and defeat, her paintings could only reflect as much. But as time provides healing for most everyone, transforming paintings serve as a similar bandaid. "Burden of Proof" is the inital painting one sees in this video, complete with words from the poem writting on the painting. Healing from emotional burdens, Maves believes needs to begin at the cellular level. As many of her paintings are about the circle, a metaphor for cellular transformation, this painting includes a celestial component as well. And perhaps our cellular transformation comes only with the help and the intervention of the divine, which seems to be at the very least, celestial, as well as interstellar in nature. For more information on Laurie Maves' abstract paintings, please visit her website @LaurieMavesART www.LaurieMavesArt.com