Every day, LABB paints balances, sensitivity, imagination and dreams.
In Search of an Ideal Aesthetic Form
Obsessed with balances, the artistic work of Laurence Bost, known as LABB, is a permanent search for skillful mixtures to approach an ideal form of aesthetics. This is reflected in the ubiquitous contrasts such as rough solids and fine lines, opaque and transparencies, light and dark, fine shades or strong color contrasts, solids and voids, the abstract mixed with scraps of figurative.
Her favorite themes are nature and man's place therein. The recurring presence of ribs, asperities, roots, branches, stems, lianas, withers, ligatures and entanglements are all ways of thinking about our links, shackles, correlations, fetters, dependencies, easements and isolation.
It is common for the same work to offer the viewer three levels of reading. From a distance for a global view of the composition "Plan view", from a classic distance for an overview of the drawing "Front view", and very close to discover tiny details invisible at first glance "Macro view". Thus the work offers several possible interpretations. In this sense, his canvases or drawings frequently work in all four directions.
A Well-Crafted Technique
LABB assembles the cotton or linen canvases herself. She then coats them with a spatula with a thick layer of pasty acrylic which leaves slight reliefs while drying.
LABB then works only with fine oil, often using white spirit to dilute it and obtain material effects. She continues by working her backgrounds with large brushes in a very brutal way. Often several coats are necessary to obtain the desired transparencies and contrasts. Then she then works the patterns with a fine brush with delicacy and precision, unlike the backgrounds.
For inks on paper, LABB uses Ecolines and India ink, alternating fast work, with a watercolor brush for the backgrounds, and very fine nib for the drawn parts.
