Laura Rathe Fine Art presents Speaking in Tongues

“Language is not a tool we have, it is a shapeshifter, a being that lives with us, walks and talks with us and has its own business and intentions.” -Anne Carson

Part of the exhilaration I acquire from painting is being able to see shifts within myself manifested into a physical reality. The most truthful form of expression I have found in my life this far has been the abstract language of painting. Self discovery is fluid and when I am painting I can see worlds within myself taking shape across their varied surfaces. When the act of looking creates optical overload the viewer is led back to the concrete realities of colour, pigment and the relief of negative space. Fields of watery pigment-stained panels have been created as intermediate moments that unify the process of creation. The paintings speak on their own emotional terms that evade logic and invite limitless interpretations.

Raised in the 80s in a rural area without internet or tv, I had little exposure to foreign languages. My father was a Pentecostal pastor and my earliest memory of a “foreign” language was the speaking of tongues. I was taught that praying in tongues was a way to bypass the mind and communicate a divinely inspired language with an utterance of the spirit. This early understanding of using language to bypass words has been deeply imprinted on me and it has since manifested itself in new ways, influencing my abstract expression.

Host or Publisher Laura Rathe Fine Art Houston