Laurie Mackie
Laurie Mackie is an artist, photographer and writer currently residing in Barriere. After thirty-plus years in the accounting and taxation fields, she returned to school in 2011 determined to explore her love of words and the creation of story. Following the granting of her B.A. in Creative Writing and intrigued by the relationship between word and image, she decided to pursue a degree in Visual Arts. Primarily a sculptor, Laurie works with mixed and multi-media to document power relationships and how those relationships affect girls and women.
Her work has appeared in several venues, including art galleries, magazines, and Luminosity. She plans to continue her work with word and image while pursuing her Master’s Degree.
Artist’s Statement
Word and image are my obsession. Both invoke emotion, prompt examination, provoke questions. Each is a half of the whole. Each gains strength from the other. As an artist, I work with mixed media: wood, Mylar, Plexiglas, fabric, paper, paint, film, and resin. Sometimes my projects are 2D, sometimes 3D. I enjoy the feel of the work in my hands; the bend and shape of emotion.
As a writer, I look for the words, the phrases that create image, a visual story that embeds the reader within. Very often, one of those words or phrases “sticks” and translates into a visual display. If I had to categorize my current bodies of work, written and visual, I would define them as an examination of “wrongs”. I talk about the dark things, the hidden. I talk about secrets.
This is a theme inherent in my last two years of practice. The first series dealt with forms of eugenics and how societal standards deal with human with human imperfection, then narrowed my focus to girls and women. From there the commentary expanded to look at how women seek perfection and the outcome in that search. Inherent in my artworks is the same notion of societal standards accepted without question.
That theme continues in my current body of work but delves deeper into the secret world of women. These are intensely personal topics which come from my experience and a vast shared experience. As the thought processes evolved, I began to understand that behind the production of these pieces, I was constructing a deeper, implicit statement. Unknowingly, these pieces are a visual representation of Michel Foucault’s theories involving the relationships between women, power, sexuality, and the institutions of law, religion, education, and government. Through this process, I’ve learned that my knowledge of wrongs had somehow remained “on the surface”. Only as I come to the end, do I understand.
Location
TRU Art Gallery, 835 University Dr
