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Meet CCA Artist Maureen Lauran

Meet CCA Artist Maureen Lauran

Maureen Lauran is an established artist, teacher, and writer. Maureen has curated many art exhibitions for the School of Art at George Mason University, given talks and a tour on the history of color at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and given a tour at the National Gallery of Art on the image of Mary Magdalen in paintings throughout the history of art. Her book Camino de Santiago, Carrying Grace to Santiago is about her solo walk on the 500-mile medieval pilgrimage trail.

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By Maureen Lauran
I received a BFA from the School of Art at Pratt Institute and did graduate study in the MFA program in painting at Indiana University. After returning from a year of private study in painting, architecture and sculpture in Italy, I began a career as a book designer for several publishers in New York and Boston. I also completed a post-graduate course in Computer Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

In my capacity as designer and art director for a number of Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies and non-profits, I’ve designed branding programs, books, consumer products and other print and web-based projects.

Aside from some printmaking, and a large number of illustrations completed for a book I wrote, and the occasional watercolor sketch, I’ve had little time to devote to my own artwork. In recent years, however, I’ve relished the opportunity to paint and explore elements of color and texture that have long interested me. I taught classes in color theory, monoprints, bookmaking and watercolor in the Studio Arts Division at The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and drawing, 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional design, and advanced level graphic design courses at George Mason University outside of Washington, in Fairfax, Virginia.

I’m presently working with aspects of the interaction of color with a reference to landscape. I’ve been exploring the “energy” of mark-making and the movement that’s created with texture and the opposite of that. I’m looking at the spatial qualities of color interaction. All of my work is in oil—on canvas and on gessoed paper.