Laura Berry Sold at Auction Prices

Laura Berry is an emerging artist living in Toronto, Ontario. She grew up in urban city landscape, surrounded by the Toronto arts community. At 16, she was accepted into the Don Valley Art Club, making her the youngest artist in the Club’s history and a member from 2007-2012. Berry attended the internationally renowned OCAD University, majoring in Drawing and Painting and minoring in Art History, and graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Berry’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and she is one of the original members of the “205 The Forgotten Show”, an annual group exhibition. Berry works primarily on a commission basis, specializing in portrait paintings. Berry’s works are in various private collections in Canada and the United States.

Working almost exclusively in portrait painting, Laura Berry’s primary interest is in capturing the quiet, personal moments of the human experience. She chooses moments of quiet enjoyment or pleasure and joy, and captures them with a snap-shot like quality. One has the sense of sharing an intimate moment with the subject while maintaining a voyeuristic distance.

Formal concerns are apparent in her work with each area of the canvas being approached with the same attention to detail, as each section of colour is equally important. Heavily influenced by the Toronto Artist Chinkok Tan’s Shape and Light Value theory, Laura looks at the shape of the object rather than the line that surrounds it. Once these shapes have been mapped out on canvas, they are methodically filled in. Berry approaches each section of compartmentalized colour almost meditatively, entering into a state of sedate harmony, reflected in the subject matter favored by the artist. This state of altered perception allows Berry to reflect upon the moment captured in the piece and reconsider its significance. Berry prefers to complete all paintings in a single sitting, creating a single extensive moment for the piece, sometimes painting for 36 or 48 hours almost completely uninterrupted.