Daffodils

2020

There is a quotation embedded in this painting — half-visible, threaded through layers of aged paper and wash — that reads: 'There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.' It is attributed to Edward de Bono. Laurie did not put it there by accident. She never does. For a woman who spent thirty years in Colorado classrooms nurturing young minds before she finally turned full-time to her own creative life, that sentiment is not decorative. It is personal. And in this piece — two daffodils rising from a collaged ground of sheet music, botanical text, postage stamps, and literary fragments — you can feel that conviction made visible. The daffodils are painted with the bold, graphic confidence of an artist who has found her voice and refuses to whisper. They are not delicate. They are declarative. They emerge, as the text at the top of the canvas reminds us, 'from the depths of its cocoon.' This is what Laurie's work does best: it turns the familiar into a treasure hunt. The humble daffodil — Colorado's spring messenger, beloved and often unnoticed — is given a stage built from human memory: music someone once played, words someone once wrote, a map of somewhere someone once traveled. Somewhere in the lower right corner, her small monogram marks the work as hers. But the story it tells? That one belongs to whoever finds it.