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Left Brain Meets Right:
Cover Artist Lauren Barksdale

by Jamey Landry

“What a card!” I quipped to myself when she told me about her first business venture. Mercifully, our cover artist, Lauren Barksdale, either didn’t hear it or graciously chose to let my silliness go. We were meeting over lunch and still had half of our smokin’ hot shrimp poboys to go. Plenty of time to go into the card question later, I thought. There was so much more to talk about already.

A native of Baton Rouge, Lauren has been an artist from a very young age. Her grandmother, Mickey Barksdale, an accomplished artist in her own right, encouraged Lauren to pursue art, nurturing her with the enviable combination of true talent and grandmotherly love that most of us can only dream of. “She was my biggest inspiration,” Lauren recalls. “An artist herself, she taught me the basics of drawing when I was a little girl.” Lauren says that times in her grandmother’s studio behind an easel, soaking up instruction like a sponge, were some of the most contented moments of her life.

Throughout high school at St. Joseph’s Academy in Baton Rouge, Sister Adelaide Williamson helped Lauren hone her drawing and painting skills. Even though she had the skills and encouragement of her teachers, Lauren entered college at LSU with a shocking major. “I was pre-med!” she bursts out with a giggle. (It really wasn’t that shocking for her to pursue pre-med—her father is a dentist.) “I switched to graphic design and business after the first semester,” she says, but not to avoid being a victim of the science and math a pre-med student endures. Rather, for Lauren, it was a coming together of all the art influences in her life, the teachers, her family and, most of all, the desire to please herself.

Once the majors were decided, Lauren threw herself into her studies, taking the design classes required for a graphic design major, as well as drawing, painting and her business classes. In 2003, with about a year of college left to go, and numerous graphic design projects under her belt, Lauren followed the advice of her college professor, Pat Vining, who helped her set up her first company, Elle Alexandra, a line of specialty cards and paper products. (See? I told you she was a card.)

It was while at LSU that Lauren discovered and developed the contemporary/abstract method that has become her signature style. Focusing mostly on realism up to that point, she enrolled in an abstract painting class that set her wheels of evolution into motion. “The structure of the class was very free and let you do what you wanted, and that’s where I got more deeply into abstract art work,” Lauren explains. “I told myself, ‘This is what I’ve always loved, and this is what I’m going to spend my time doing. I can actually do it and make a living. I’m going to get a studio and do this everyday.’ So I started painting for real.”

Lauren’s mother and mother-in-law are huge collectors of her work, as you might expect. She says it was a piece given to her mother-in-law that helped rev up interest in her work. “Her friends saw it, and it just took off from there.”

Although she now prefers painting abstracts, Lauren pays homage to realism and all it entails as being an essential part of becoming a successful abstract artist. To further emphasize her opinion, she says, “It’s the basis of being able to look at something and make it your own, to be able to capture the essence of whatever it is in front of you.” She chooses to express those essences primarily in acrylics, because their quick drying time compared to oils is better suited to her layered technique. “I like a lot of texture, and oils would take months to dry between layers,” she laments.

When I asked her to comment on her work and what influences brought her work to where it is, her response was surprising—but perhaps not unexpected—for this particular abstract artist. In what might be described as a classic left brain-right brain struggle, Lauren’s experience as a graphic designer plays a role in her paintings. “Graphic design is all on a grid, and those projects are about the composition, the weight, the colors, even the type. Whatever is in the graphic design project, it all has to balance.” In short, graphic design, especially advertising and logos, while still very creative, is essentially tight and orderly. Abstracts, as the name implies, are very free flowing. Lauren’s work combines the two with unique results. Evidence of that is found in her nudes, where the flowing organic shapes of females are found imposed over rigidly placed grids of vibrant, vividly colored networks of texture. The works are a classic balance of expression and freedom over a world of order—the yin and yang of art styles.
Left brain, meet right brain.

View Lauren’s work online at www.laurenbarksdale.com. Commissions are accepted by appointment at her studio, Lauren Barksdale Fine Art and Design, 12045 Coursey Blvd., Baton Rouge, (225) 933-6729. Lauren’s work is also showing at Susan Illing’s French Twist Gallery, located inside Julie Neill Designs at 3908 Magazine St., New Orleans. Elle Alexandra cards and stationery are available at www.ellealexandra.com and fine paper shops throughout the area.