The Verve: Emerging artist, welder uses mixed media to create beauty
Art is Laura Novak’s thing.
She was born in New Mexico and was inspired by the art scene in Santa Fe, a city known for its appreciation of the arts. Her mother and grandmother were artists and she was regularly exposed to creative endeavors.
Upon viewing metal sculptures, Novak learned to weld. She became a welder by trade, working in New Mexico and Seattle. She also moonlighted as a bartender and apprenticed at a tattoo shop. With family split between New Mexico and Spokane, she eventually settled here, where there were no welding jobs to be found.
Now, she’s a stay-at-home mom to a 4-year-old daughter. She paints in oils on the front porch of her South Hill home and is on her way to a fine arts degree from Spokane Falls Community College.
“For me, art is not a hobby or something I do just for fun. I paint out of personal necessity. I have a very visual mind that runs on high at all times, it seems,” she said. “If I go too long without getting the thoughts or images out of my head, I find it hard to concentrate on other things. It soothes me to feel the brush moving with my hand, becoming connected to my inner visual world.”
Wherever she has lived, Novak, 36, has always drawn or painted, showing her work sparingly, including at a shop in Seattle. “I’m not very good at promoting my work,” she said.
Her earlier works included the use of glass, bone, shoe polish, model paint, epoxy, wire, and found objects, and her latest work includes a series of animal skulls painted on canvas in oil; soothing colors and the addition of flowers make the subject matter a little less ominous.
“I want to make the world more beautiful, but beauty is subjective,” Novak said. “I see it in imperfections and perfections alike. Shiny and new holds me transfixed in the same way as old and tarnished does, and I like to mix the two together.”
She has done figurative studies with ethereal qualities and narrative work like a piece showing an African woman wearing medical gloves as she reaches to touch her son. She works fast, often working on more than one piece at a time, and then slows down for the fine details.
“The final piece isn’t always that important to me as much as the process of creating it. I can easily change what I paint from one day to the next. For me, painting is all about studying the world around me and developing my skills. I am my worst critic and never feel completely satisfied with my work. Because of this, I push myself to try harder and keep making more art.” Recently she bought a welder in hopes of revisiting her desire to manipulate metal.