Meet Veronica Lawlor

We were lucky to catch up with Veronica Lawlor recently and have shared our conversation below.

Veronica, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

I don’t find my purpose it finds me, through my process of drawing on location.
I get excited and interested when drawing in certain types of spaces – often gritty urban environments or wild places of nature. While I’m drawing on site I intuitively feel the lingering memories of things that occurred there. I follow that energy and those stories, leading me to more drawings and then abstract narrative paintings. I like to tell my students, follow your passion and you’ll discover your purpose. That certainly has been the case for me: I can get a little obsessed!

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am an artist and educator with a background in illustration and semiotics, interested in the way we hold our memories and stories through sensation.

I’d say that my artistic career sits at the intersection of illustration and abstraction. For over 20 years, my on-site reportage drawings have led me around the world creating award-winning illustrations for numerous clients. I would describe that work as impressionistic realism, and it’s important to me to express the sensation of each location through formal aesthetic concerns.

In the last 10 years I have increasingly turned to location work as a method of inquiry and point of departure for abstract studio painting. My work has been called ‘psycho-aesthetic.’ Through the immersive process of on-site drawing I begin to discover the subtle energies and emotional resonances that vibrate within a space. I am particularly attracted to places where nature and human history intersect, leaving echoes of the cycles of life behind.

My painted surfaces mirror these cycles of renewal; layered, scratched, printed and collaged into palimpsests of experience. The paintings are meditations on memory and material transformation, and a hopeful symbol of resilience.

I’m also a native New York City resident, and a long-time professor on the faculty of Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design, and, more recently, The Woodstock School of Art. I love to teach and consider it my honor to guide students to find their own voice and self-expression through the arts.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Determination, resilience, and playfulness have been the things that have kept me walking on my path.
Determination to make my artistic mark.
Resilience to be flexible in dealing with challenges and setbacks.
Playfulness to always keep the spirit of fun and study alive both when drawing on location and working in the studio.

The advice I would give to folks who are early in their journey is to keep your sense of fun and curiosity alive, and enjoy the process. If you do that, you’ll discover the path that is true to your authentic self, and the universe will align with your purpose.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

This question is so revealing. As I’m writing this, I am grateful and humbled to realize that if I knew that I only had a decade of life left, I would spend it doing the things I do now: drawing, painting, teaching, traveling and spending time enjoying family and friends. I would certainly reduce the amount of paperwork and administrative tasks I must do, if possible, but honestly, doing those tasks helps smooth the way for doing the things that I love.
Oh, and I’d probably dance more than I do now – maybe I’ll start working that into my daily routine!

Contact Info:

Image Credits

All images credited to Veronica Lawlor

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