Laura Pharis

At art6 Oct. 3 through Oct. 26, 2008

Laura Pharis was born and raised in Roanoke, Virginia, and wanted to be an artist from birth. She had the good fortune to have support in this from her mother, Virginia Shear Pharis, and from some excellent teachers, including Lyn Yeatts, Barbara Bishop, Leo Pagenhart, and Shirlee Loomer. She wishes to thank these inspiring women.

Between the ages of eighteen and forty, she received a BFA in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University, a Diploma in Special Advanced Studies in Printmaking at the Central School of Art and Design in London, England, and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Pharis was manager of the Richmond Printmaking Workshop and has been teaching in the studio art department at Sweet Briar College since 1990. She maintains her membership in One/Off, a group of printmakers who exhibit together, and has travelled to work in printmaking workshops in London and Ireland. In 2000, she was named Virginia Artist of the Year by the Richmond Women's Caucus for the Arts. Her artwork has appeared on CD covers of traditional musicians Robbie Wells, Mike Seeger, and the band Naomi's Fancy, concert pianist Nicolas Ross, and on several recordings of stringed instruments.

Artist's statement

My work is an attempt to access a desired space where strangeness meets myth, dream, magic. Among my inspirations are traditional music, folk tales, and the natural world of plants, animals, land and weather, all the hanging on the hook of beauty.

Making art involves the intellect, the eyes, and the spirit, but as far as I'm concerned, nothing can replace the sensuality and immediacy of making images with my hands. My work is characterized by an insistance on the hand with attention approaching compulsion, meditation and if I'm lucky, trance. There is a logic to selecting a process; different images demand different techniques. I try to make work that believes in haints, shape-shifitng, ghost lovers, premonitions and divine retribution.