Laurie Lipton

Laurie Lipton

Laurie Lipton was born in New York. She was the first person to graduate from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pennsylvania with a Fine Arts Degree in Drawing (with honours). She has lived in Holland, Belgium, Germany and France and has made her home in London since 1986.

Lipton's drawings have been described as "cover[ing] social commentary, human observation and the absolute bizarre." Her work, distilled from her Freudian nightmares and oft-tortured world, lies within a "realm of experience amongst which we live, but few inhabit."

During a 2003 interview, Lipton expressed interest in challenging her perceptions of reality, using myth and symbolism to express the human condition. Her psychologically provocative imagery, its thematic continuum of fear, is a response to life as the perfect child - pretty, intelligent, well-behaved, very loving to her parents. She said, "I didn´t know what to do with the sizzling mass of negative feelings that infiltrated into my perfect being. I wasn´t encouraged to act out my fear or anger." She found a way to cope with the dark side of her soul through art, "I used to sit alone and draw for hours as a child. My parents were very proud of my talent and would display my work whenever company came to the house. People would look at me (a pretty, sweet little girl), then look at my drawings (monsters, screaming devils, mayhem and blood), and edge slowly away. My mother was asked how she felt about my "horrible, angry imagery". She merely shrugged her shoulders and said, "Better out than in".