12" x 16"
Collaged photo lithograph on wood board with acrylic 2024
@k.a.laird
Katherine A. Laird is a contemporary printmaker, surrealist dreamer and inter-media artist fusing re- imagined print processes into new fictions. While considering the relationship of nature and fairytale, she explores the impact of environmental and biological change through surreal and fantastical fictions. Humans have entered a new geological epoch defined by the visible and lasting effects of human activity detrimental to all aspects of the environment and body. Laird confronts this theme by exploring dreamscapes, imagined futures, and fantastical fictions in the new and hopeful Ecocene experienced by the innocence, romanticism, and fantasy of childhood understanding, nightmares and storybook aesthetic.
Laird graduated from McMaster University with honors in Bachelor of Fine Arts, and from York University with honors in Les Études françaises, minoring in Fine Arts and Cultural Studies. She was the 2019 Mississauga Arts Council MARTY award winner in the Emerging Visual Artist category and received Honourable Mentions by the Ontario Society of Artists in the 2020 Emerging Artist’s Juried Exhibition. She continues to exhibit work nationally and internationally, and is a newly featured artist at Corner Gallery, Haliburton.
THE STORY:
Humans have entered a new geological epoch defined by the visible and lasting effects of human activity detrimental to all aspects of the environment. My work imagines relationships between nature, flora and fauna, through speculative and illustrative fictions. I reside in surreal and imagined narratives of ecological coexistence in a hopeful Ecocene experienced by the innocence, romanticism, and fantasy of childhood understanding and storybook aesthetic.
The dreamlike narrative in my work responds imaginatively to the seriousness of ecological degradation and the anxiety of children facing this challenge. I aim to foster hope and nostalgia with nature while bringing attention to something more perennial and magical in our environment.
I engage through real and imagined futures, surreal narratives and fantastical fictions by combining a fusion of photo-lithography, etching and re-imagined print processes activated by digital GIFs, dimensional collage and installation.
*Please note: Purchased works are available for pickup on Sat. Oct 5th from 12-3pm, otherwise, arrangements will be made between collectors and buyers directly following the Art Circuit.