Andrea Lauren discovered her love for printmaking while studying for her Master’s degree in music at Columbia University in New York. Now, working as a printmaker and surface pattern designer, she takes to her passion full time.
Each of Lauren’s designs is drawn first by hand, then transferred to a rubber or linoleum block. The design is carved into the block and the block is inked and printed by hand. Then it is scanned and edited on a computer in her home studio.
She relies on sketchbooks to keeping track of her many ideas. “I keep a number of different sketchbooks but they are often very rough ideas for the finished pieces,” she told the Fishink blog. “Sometimes they are ideas or themes. Sometimes sketches giving a general guide for composition. Imagining an idea as a relief print has become fairly fluent for me in the last year of concentrated practice. Sketchbooks for me are also a great way to remember and revisit thematic material which was completed earlier in my development and needs another go.”
Inspired by her love of nature, walks in the woods, storybooks, folk tales, and childhood memories, she sees her connection with nature as an overarching motivation for her work. “It is easy to see how disconnected one can become with the technology available, but without respecting and acknowledging the incredible natural world it would be a much less rewarding life to live,” she stressed.
Enjoy some of her work in the gallery below:
