Laura Jane Scott

Laura Jane Scott is an artist working in minimalist, geometric abstraction and colour-field painting. Her desire for simplicity through geometric form and her striking use of colour enables her to produce work where painting explores a model of architectural form and where colour embodies a physical structure. The resulting work is a refined visual vocabulary of form and colour.

Laura studied at Camberwell College of Arts and Ravensbourne University London. Her work has been exhibited widely over the past eight years in London, Edinburgh, New York and Hamburg and has featured twice in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition.

Laura lives in South East London with her partner and two children and works from a studio at home.

‘At the centre of my work is play. I’m inspired a lot by open-ended toys; simple objects and structures that act as canvases to project ideas onto. Things that can be arranged and rearranged. A vocabulary of loose parts.

I love to set some initial boundaries like working with a small palette of colours or a limited set of shapes and then follow the threads of ideas, experimenting and adjusting along the way. My work is part-process and part-intuition.’

Laura focuses on and has been exploring form and colour and the dynamic relationship between the two. She describes her work as an effort to give colour a tangible form, almost a sense of weight. Recently, she’s begun to experiment with reducing or removing some of that form, leaving behind voids or spaces within the colour itself. She is particularly drawn to the shadows cast by her relief works and have been exploring ways to interact more intentionally with these shadows.

By creating boxes, trays, or indents, the artist forces the presence of shadows, carving out spaces where none existed before. These recessed works, according to the artist, evoke themes of privacy and containment, suggesting a sense of retreat or introspection. The tension between wanting to be seen and simultaneously desiring to hide is a central theme, something that resonates deeply with her as an introvert who values and protects her personal space. Although unintentional at first, the artist has come to realize just how much of her inner world is reflected in her creative process and the resulting work.

‘I have always had a really strong, clear sense of what I like. And I would abandon every expectation and every preconceived idea that anybody else has about what art should be, before I would abandon my own instinct in what I make.
Because art, for me, is freedom. Freedom from opinion, from judgement, from that elusive ‘right’ that so often hovers just out of sight. It’s the point where I feel most myself, most honest, most in touch with my instinct. In everyday life, I can feel unsure, misunderstood. Looking outside of myself and not within. But when I make, I make for an audience of one, for the enjoyment and judgement of one. I make only what I want to see. The decisions come easily, instinctively; unclouded by external voices. The purest form of poetry in my work is when it comes from a place of not thinking, when it comes from my gut. Everything 'other' falls away, it’s just me, and I am satisfied.’

We are proud to represent Laura Jane Scott exclusively in the Nordics and will be launching a series of her work in the gallery in December 2024.