About Magnolia

Baltimore City
Magnolia Laurie was born in Massachusetts and raised in Puerto Rico. She received her BA in Critical Social Thought from Mount Holyoke College and her MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art.  She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, and the Jentel Foundation in Wyoming. She has also been a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the… more

GROUND SHIFT

The work in GROUND SHIFT was made in response to my recent time in Iceland. The title nods to the act of traveling and literally shifting ground, altering one’s place in the world and thus one’s view. Iceland feels like a ground in perpetual motion and transition; impacted by eruptions, tectonic plate shift, glacial melt, and constant weather change. In Iceland I felt both awe and inconsequentially vulnerable to the whim of, not simply the land, but the whole spinning earth. I stood completely blinded by dense fog, touched rocks that rose up from under the earths crust, stared off through vast barren lava fields, and humbly climbed atop a glacier as it melted beneath my feet. Distinct from my past work, these paintings bear fewer direct references to the manmade and settle the gaze on the idea of the landscape itself. In this way, GROUND SHIFT also refers to a change in scale and focus within the work - a shift towards glacier time, tectonic movement, and geological formation. 
  • I asked the horizon line, it replied with a well worn stone
    I asked the horizon line, it replied with a well worn stone
    I asked the horizon line, it replied with a well worn stone 2016, oil on panel, 36 x 36 inches
  • if we could drill wisdom from a stone
    if we could drill wisdom from a stone
    2016, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches
  • to get at the center of the world
    to get at the center of the world
    to get at the center of the world 2016, oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches
  • wider than the sky
    wider than the sky
    wider than the sky, 2016, oil on panel, 36 x 36 inches
  • just a crack in the crust, marking time and change
    just a crack in the crust, marking time and change
    just a crack in the crust, marking time and change, 2016, oil on panel, 36 x 36 inches
  • revel in the space between
    revel in the space between
    revel in the space between, 2016, oil on panel, 36 x 36 inches
  • to wonder what could, what would be
    to wonder what could, what would be
    to wonder what could, what would be 2016, oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches
  • how to lose without negotiating
    how to lose without negotiating
    how to lose without negotiating 2016, oil on panel, Diptych 24 x 73 inches, each panel is 24 x 36 inches
  • to wander across burnt land, with anticipation and hope
    to wander across burnt land, with anticipation and hope
    to wander across burnt land, with anticipation and hope 2016, oil on panel, 36 x 36 inches
  • there was no circumventing the weather
    there was no circumventing the weather
    there was no circumventing the weather 2016, oil on panel, 24 x 12 inches

Landmark : Paralax Views

This body of work draws from history and current events, recomposing mountain top removal explosions, aerial views of flooded communities, and the billowing plumes of oil train derailments. These are events that impact us all in some way or another, but our opinions and views are shaped by our proximity, our needs, our costs and our benefits. I wanted to address parallax views and multiple vantage points within the work as a way to suggest the complexity of our relationships to the land we occupy and utilize. I created dual panel paintings that explore a range of diptych formats to focus on the idea of vantage point and the spacial experience of looking from here to there. 

Just as vantage point impacts our opinions, physicality impacts our attention. We relate to information presented in a two-dimensional space differently than we do to that in three-dimensional space, things that occupy our space command our attention. To recognize that fact, some paintings are shown on the walls while others occupy custom-made wooden structures. These structures bring the paintings off of the wall and into an awkwardly active and insistent space that wanders in a non-committal manner between sculpture, picket-sign, billboard, and furniture.

This work was featured in the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of the 2015 Sondheim Prize Finalist Exhibition.
  • ash and moss, hold us together
    ash and moss, hold us together
    2015 Oil on panel 2 panels, 24” x 24” each
  • slapstick, a coincidence of humor and melancholy
    slapstick, a coincidence of humor and melancholy
    2015 Oil on panel 24 x 24 inches
  • new geography lessons with oil and water
    new geography lessons with oil and water
    2015 Oil on panel 54” x 18”
  • Exhibition view at BMA
    Exhibition view at BMA
  • left unsaid
    left unsaid
    2015 Oil on panel Horizontal diptych, Two panels 24" x 30" each
  • we roam and lie still
    we roam and lie still
    2015 Oil on panel Vertical diptych, 24” x 24” and 12” x 24”
  • in awe of nothing
    in awe of nothing
    2014 Oil on panel 22” x 10”
  • a potential turning point
    a potential turning point
    2014 Oil on panel 22” x 10”
  • between here and there
    between here and there
    2014 Oil on panel 22” x 10”
  • on both sides, there was a habit to edit and revise
    on both sides, there was a habit to edit and revise
    2015 Oil on panel Horizontal diptych, Two panels 40” x 30” each

Landmark

This body of work started in the summer of 2013 at the Jentel Artist Residency. Driving from Baltimore to Wyoming, I spent many hours looking at the landscape moving by and thinking about its history and transformation in the time that people have claimed ownership of it. Heading west, there is a sense of an ever increasing scale – it’s hard not to feel somewhat romantic and nostalgic about it –even if it is marked by billboards, signs, old oil drilling rigs, scorched hillsides, and miles of fences claiming ownership of it all.

As a body, these new paintings have a sense of conflated meaning. They imply the sublime and the history of landscape painting, while acknowledging the melancholic cycles of infrastructure and decay. Parallel to these ideas, I wanted to explore the more consumer oriented act of travel photography and tourism. In these conditions, what would be considered a landmark? l was interested in this term for the duality of its meaning as both a marker as well as a destination or place – it can indicate both where we are or where we want to go. It can be a point of reference in space but also an event or point in time, such as a turning point or a moment of discovery. In this context I could draw connections between the personal and the societal, the past and the present, the functional and the futile. With current political issues over water and energy resources, as well as what has felt like increasing severe weather and steadily rising environmental concerns, I wanted to incorporate the conflicting visual vocabulary that marks the land we live on and utilize. These are also our landmarks, they mark our occupation and use of the land, they mark a location, they will mark a moment in time - perhaps a turning point.
  • Studio view of multiple peices
    Studio view of multiple peices
  • how we bury the past
    how we bury the past
    2014, oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches
  • suspending hope, we dug up the future
    suspending hope, we dug up the future
    2014, oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches
  • somewhere between lost and found
    somewhere between lost and found
    2014, oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches
  • a means to measure change
    a means to measure change
    2014, oil on panels, 20 x 10 inches
  • the near to far
    the near to far
    2014, oil on panel, 16 x 16 inches
  • magnolialaurie03.jpg
    magnolialaurie03.jpg
  • to the moon, from here (wall) & a reflecting return (structure)
    to the moon, from here (wall) & a reflecting return (structure)
    2014, oil on panels, 14 x 14 inches each
  • to lead us back again
    to lead us back again
    2014, oil on panel, 14 x 14 inches
  • we could differ and still turn out better
    we could differ and still turn out better
    2014, oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches

Markers

Continuing with some of the ideas from What Could Hold Us Together, this work spans 2012-2013. The paintings reference images of natural and made made decay and destruction. At times, the pending threat is slow, an abandonment and neglect that is seemingly just as inescapable as an on oncoming tornado. In the work I was thinking about time and repetition. Events mark time, these are markers of a moment of transition, a change for better or worse.
  • to unmake history, again
    to unmake history, again
    oil on panels, 12 x 12 & 9 x 12 inches, 2013
  • to unmake history, again
    to unmake history, again
    oil on panels, 12 x 12 & 9 x 12 inches, 2013 on the wall: to the moon... oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches, 2013
  • in praise of nothing but my favorite epithet
    in praise of nothing but my favorite epithet
    oil on panel, 16 x 16 inches, 2013
  • we have only built to settle stones, second try
    we have only built to settle stones, second try
    oil on panel, 14 x 14 inches, 2012
  • circumventing entropy, for a moment
    circumventing entropy, for a moment
    oil and graphite on panel, 18 x 18 inches, 2012
  • projectiles come to rest, we understand that better in hindsight
    projectiles come to rest, we understand that better in hindsight
    oil on panel, 14 x 14 inches, 2012
  • we’ve run amok, but we left a mark
    we’ve run amok, but we left a mark
    oil and graphite on panel, 9 x 12 inches, 2012
  • I followed it back to what you didn't say
    I followed it back to what you didn't say
    oil on panel, 12 x 16 inches, 2012
  • creating a tender ruin, we should ahve know better
    creating a tender ruin, we should ahve know better
    graphite and oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches, 2012
  • marker, indicating a quiet turn in our path
    marker, indicating a quiet turn in our path
    oil on panel, 14 x 14 inches

what could hold us together

What Could Hold Us Together is a series of work created for a solo exhibition at frosch&portmann Gallery in NY.

Within the work I wanted to pose the question of what could hold us back from the brink of falling apart, as mounting political, social, and economic calamities seemed to perpetually threaten. I wanted What Could Hold Us Together to read both as a question to a hopeless answer, as well as a resilient statement of hope and assurance of what will persist and endure and maintain. The title of the exhibition comes from a line in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. In 2012 I found myself rereading the novel along with Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and John Steinbeck’s America and Americans. These narratives of precarious transition with wandering narrators informed the visual language and psychology of the environments in the paintings. Within the paintings I tried to balance domesticity with survival, the falsity of facade and the reality of barriers, and the hopeful with the hopeless.
  • the urgency of the moment always missed the mark
    the urgency of the moment always missed the mark
    oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches
  • the aesthetic possibilities of indifference ,
    the aesthetic possibilities of indifference ,
    oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches
  • following a trail of vague marks
    following a trail of vague marks
    oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches
  • piling wreckage upon wreckage, collect and carry
    piling wreckage upon wreckage, collect and carry
    oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches
  • caught in a vast and benevolent lethargy of well wishing, we did nothing
    caught in a vast and benevolent lethargy of well wishing, we did nothing
    oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches
  • new lessons in geography, record breaking
    new lessons in geography, record breaking
    oil on panel, 14 x 14 inches
  • within a measure of unpredictability
    within a measure of unpredictability
    oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches
  • leaning, just a measure of acceleration, mass and time
    leaning, just a measure of acceleration, mass and time
    oil and graphite on panel, 16 x 20 inches
  •  we can all adjust to inhabiting the accident
    we can all adjust to inhabiting the accident
    oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches
  • notions of comfort, knocked askew
    notions of comfort, knocked askew
    oil on panel, 9x12 inches

holding up

In Holding Up I wanted to explore the repeating task of enduring weight. This series references accumulative structures such as bird nests, entwined debris and residual heaps that remain after a storm. Within the series, delicate structures change and adapt, as do the weights or pressures. And in the end, the series is about endurance and survival, making-do and adapting.
  • if the wooing works
    if the wooing works
    if the wooing works 2010, Oil and Graphite on Panel, 18 x 18?
  • to trip and get back up
    to trip and get back up
    to trip and get back up 2010, oil on Panel, 18 x 18?
  • to burrow and build and borrow
    to burrow and build and borrow
    oil on panel, 36" x 36"
  • to swagger and croon, with just a little tug
    to swagger and croon, with just a little tug
    oil on panel, 12" x 12"
  • between here and nearest land
    between here and nearest land
    oil on panel, 14" x 14"
  • a modest and wry estrangement
    a modest and wry estrangement
    oil on panel, 18" x 18"
  • unfurled, but holding
    unfurled, but holding
    oil on panel, 12" x 12"
  • left alone with architecture that grows in the dark
    left alone with architecture that grows in the dark
    oil on panel, 18" x 18"
  • it's hard to trust in these qualities
    it's hard to trust in these qualities
    oil on panel, 18" x 18"
  • he noted, "The aesthetic impulse is the second strongest, after survival."
    he noted, "The aesthetic impulse is the second strongest, after survival."
    oil on panel, 36" x 36"