Laura Fischman

Region: MFA Annual

In my painting practice I capture the unnoticed, imperfect, and often fragmented topographies of everyday life. In this series, I question what it is that we choose to see and notice. I paint quiet, broken, utilitarian, and unspectacular objects that are at once familiar and somehow forgotten. Spouts, gutters, and pipes become oddly anthropomorphized when removed from their original context. These small paintings are portraits—bodily in their shape and construction and often functioning as the juncture between inside and outside worlds. They are an exploration of the inevitability of the passage of time, the tragic beauty of the banal, and the abjection and authenticity of the everyday. I hope to create a moment of pause and reflection, of revealing, acceptance, and forgiveness, where the overlooked can be memorialized and can elicit empathy.