Laura Berger’s Lyrical Paintings Illuminate The Human Soul

Chicago-based artist Laura Berger’s work is centered around themes of self-understanding, spirituality, interdependence, and existentialism. Featuring figurative imagery on minimalist planes, Berger’s work is inspired by dreams, rituals, and personal experiences. Set in nature or surreal dreamscapes, Berger’s paintings evoke the feeling of trying to grasp a dream or a memory that is only partially within reach. External identifiers such as race and age are removed from her figures to represent the universality of the human experience and to accentuate the human soul. 

Since the artist’s residency at The Jaunt in Lima, Peru, Berger has won The Hopper Prize and her work has been exhibited internationally. Her solo exhibitions include Hashimoto Contemporary in Los Angeles, Eve Leibe Gallery in London, Stephanie Chefas Projects in Portland, and Andenken Gallery in Amsterdam.

Can you tell me about your background, and what drove you to become an artist? 

I was always focused on my creative outlets as a kid – I did a lot of singing, writing, theatre, playing different musical instruments, and dancing – but I also always loved to draw and paint. I unintentionally started a disciplined painting practice when I was in my late twenties after my father passed away. It became something reliable that I could return to every day that really helped to ground me and get through that time; my painting practice was definitely therapeutic for me then as it still is now.

Describe your work in three words.

Emotive, existential, sensorial.

Your practice touches on the subconscious. Is your work inspired by dreams, rituals or personal experiences? 

All of the above, I suppose. I’d say my work is really just inspired by my overall experience of going through this life, which definitely includes my personal encounters, my dreams, and the ways I tap into spirituality, but also includes my thoughts and feelings, colours I see, and just the internal integration of all the different things I take in throughout time.

The female figures in your work are often interlaced with one another, or with elements of nature. What would you like to convey about the female experience? 

I identify as a woman so the female figure is really just the form that I’m most comfortable with to use as a sort of avatar to try to convey my ideas. I’m not as concerned with the gender of the figures so much as I am the connections between them, or what’s happening within them. The themes in the paintings are universal and my hope is that the figures are relatable to everyone on a more emotional or purely human level. 

I like the paintings to have a sort of dreamy quality to them – a sense of mystery or ambiguity – like trying to grasp a memory that’s only partially within reach. I try to keep the narrative and environmental location loose and somewhat ambiguous, open to different interpretations or connections.  Usually even for me a painting can hold multiple meanings – I often start off with one thing in my head and I start discovering more possibilities as I spend time working on the piece – which I really enjoy.

What was the inspiration behind your new body of work for your current solo show at Eve Leibe Gallery, London? 

I suppose a lot of inspiration is really coming from the internal well these days following these years of the pandemic where our experiences have been so much more limited. My paintings are mostly rooted in emotional experience. I'm interested primarily in conveying feeling and invoking mood through colour, composition, narrative, and subject matter.  

With this show, I've also become more focused on conveying small moments of tactile sensation in my paintings: the feeling of a cool necklace on your skin, a flower petal grazing a nipple, the imagined sensation of being wrapped in light…I’m wondering if that’s showing up in my work after these pandemic years because that tactic focus on small, physical sensations can be used as a way to combat anxiety, as well as be a mindfulness technique. Some of these current paintings also have a bit more humour or playfulness on the surface, but with the sense of something deeper running underneath.

The title Soft Bound has multiple meanings. It relates to our actual physical and emotional ties, or binds to each other, ourselves, our environment, or our ancestors. There is also the literary meaning referencing our personal narratives or stories – the way we create or assign meaning to different experiences, and how that relates to our sense of self. For this show, I was thinking about themes like memory, the merging of past and present stories, hedonism or pleasure as coping strategies for dealing with uncertain and difficult experiences, and the illumination or unearthing of hidden parts of ourselves, such as our secrets or histories.

Can you describe your creative process?

Ideas for paintings arrive in my mind as either images, partial images, or verbal concepts that I would like to create an image for, and usually at times when I'm feeling some degree of spaciousness mentally – when I'm not thinking too hard or feeling a lot of stress – while meditating or walking, taking a bath, in transit somewhere, or just before sleep. I keep a huge list with all of these fleeting ideas, and when I'm ready to make new work, I go through my recent entries and see what still feels compelling. Then I sketch a ton of ideas out and that helps me to narrow things down further; some ideas in my head just end up not working on paper, or maybe I’m not ready to make them yet. Once I’m done with the sketching phase, I figure out what size might work best for the image and then I stretch the canvas, transfer the drawing and start to paint.  I used to plan out my colours pretty meticulously before jumping in but lately I’ve been working more intuitively. A goal for me as an artist and as a person is to keep working on loosening the need for certainty – it can become a hindrance to me.

Which artists have especially inspired you?  

There are so many, it’s always hard to choose. Arthur Dove, Domenico Gnoli, Paul Klee, Georgia O’Keeffe, Victor Brauner, Miró, Matisse.

Lately I've been looking at a lot of Miyoko Ito and Luchita Hurtado.

And of course I love the work of the transcendentalist painters – like Hilma af Klint and Agnes Pelton.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Travel as much as possible! Don’t worry so much about always meeting other people’s expectations of you.  And I think I’d just give her a hug.

Any exciting plans you’re currently working towards?

It’s turning out to be a busy year for me. I have solo shows coming up this year at Stephanie Chefas Projects in Portland in August and Hashimoto Contemporary in Los Angeles in December, plus some group shows.