ABOUT THE ARTIST

Laura Thompson is an American mixed media and collage artist based in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Her contemporary and surrealist work combines meticulously cut imagery from vintage magazines with abstract and representational painting to create dream-like and amusing compositions.   

Growing up on the fringe of a wealthy suburb of Rochester, NY, she was exposed to levels of privilege and hypocrisy that she found objectionable. From early on she honed the coping skills of humor and sarcasm. However, it wasn’t until after years of teaching art to middle schoolers that she began incorporating these themes into her own work. 

 She left upstate NY in 1998 to attend James Madison University, where she earned her BFA in Graphic Design and MA in Art Education. She began showing her stained and fused glass art in 2004, but returned to drawing and painting after her daughter was born in 2008. She worked with graphite and watercolor, then leaned heavily into oil painting for several years, at which point her characteristic tone of humor emerged. After a pandemic-induced painting hiatus, she discovered her signature mixed media collage style, which debuted in January 2021.