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April Issue 2009
Artists' Guild
of Spartanburg in Spartanburg, SC, Features Works by Laura K.
Hull
The Artists' Guild of
Spartanburg will present the exhibit, Snooty Cat - A Storm
at Whisker Palace & More, featuring works by Laura K.
Hull, on view at the Guild Gallery at the Chapman Cultural Center
in Spartanburg, SC, from Apr. 1 - 28, 2009.
The watercolors in the exhibit include illustrations for a children's
book entitled Snooty Cat - A Storm at Whisker Palace, chronicling
the adventures of a cat that is afraid of thunderstorms. Also
in the exhibit are watercolors that were not included in the book,
some that will appear in upcoming installments of the "Snooty
Cat" saga and other examples of her colorful and unique style.
Hull, a native of Mount Kisco, NY, moved to Spartanburg with her husband Bill in 1987 to establish residency for their youngest son to attend the School for the Multihandicapped at the Herbert Center at South Carolina School for the Deaf. She became a licensed respiratory therapist, taking courses at Spartanburg Methodist College and Spartanburg Community College (then Spartanburg Technical College).
After retiring in 2003, Hull decided to pursue an interest in art that had been inspired by her father, an architect from whom she had learned different techniques of painting. She began painting and attending classes and workshops, and in 2005 established Artistic Nature, through which she and her husband market her paintings, prints and other items. Since then, the artist has committed herself fulltime to painting.
"I've only just begun to get lost in the creativity which art allows. Watercolor in itself flows much like nature, free and clear with happy accidents along the way," Hull says of the discoveries she's made on the journey to her career as an artist.
Hull's vivid watercolor paintings incorporate natural scenes, replete with flowers, insects, butterflies, birds, squirrels, raccoons and polar bears. The whimsical illustrations she created for the children's book, show Paw C. Wigglesworth (Snooty Cat's real name) and his friend Jiggles the Mouse discovering that thunderstorms bring more than bright flashes and frightening noises. They discover that there is also a rainbow at the end of the storm, the lesson about overcoming fears that the author wanted to convey.
The collaboration with author Cindy Yates Alderman was Hull's first experience with illustrating. She was surprised at how freeing it was to be creating an image in her mind rather than painting something that she could see. The self-taught artist, who often spends weekends traveling with her husband in an RV to festivals to showcase and sell her work, found creating images to match the words on the page "a thrill".
"The challenge and focus is very good for me. Art brings much peace in a stress- filled world. I love Nature, God and life." Hull says, "It's my desire to have color vibrate my love, taking the viewer into my paintings along the way."
A member of the Artists' Guild of Spartanburg and South Carolina Watermedia Society, as well as other local and regional organizations, Hull says that she enjoys 'capturing the creativity of the medium and allowing others to appreciate the beauty of the flow of light, water and color" as she creates her images.
For further information
check our SC Institutional Gallery listings or call Laura Pinkley
at 864/764-9568.
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