We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lauren E. Peters. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lauren E. below.
Lauren E., thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?
I quit my full-time job a few months after turning 40 to pursue a career as an artist. Being a woman in your 40s is a wild ride on its own, let alone one that throws a great job working in a commercial gallery into the wind and abandons the plan of settling into a stable career. After being an art major in college but then entering a period of not painting for about 10 years, I was finally able to pick it up again and show a small body of work in 2016. There is a significant amount of pressure I have created for myself in thinking I have to make up for lost time but given the highly introspective nature of my work, I don’t think I could have started any earlier. Examining the complexity of identity has required a surprising erasure of self, one that I feel I was so frantically trying to build through my 30s. I often joke that my practice is built upon my inability to take a personality test with any amount of conviction, a desperation to check boxes that would tell me who I was. And now I want to live in all of the spaces around and in-between those boxes, as unsettling as it may be at times. Feeling like an outsider is a common theme among artists, and one that is compounded for me as our culture seems to have very little knowledge of what to do with middle-aged women, especially one without her own children or a recognizable career. I think that designation of “other” is what lets me explore my subject matter with such freedom. There were other issues in play as well, mainly a freak accident that put me in a lot of medical debt at a time when I did not have health insurance. Trying to physically and mentally heal from that experience is not one that lends itself to a creative spirit, or one that elicits bold action. It took a global pandemic to push me into unknown territory, having never once leapt in hopes a net would appear. All of the hardship in those “lost years” were as necessary as getting to know myself better, and the accumulation of life experience feels crucial to playing the long game in a field that is not for the faint of heart.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Working for a number of years in self-portraiture is something that makes complete sense in hindsight, but a world I entered with no intentions of it lasting beyond that first exhibit. All I wanted to do was paint, and after college I could not find an idea that I could dig into and eventually stopped painting altogether. Having grown up within a family business that was a specialized, high-end dry cleaner, I also found myself working there again after college. During this time I began filling hours with costuming at a local theater and began to absorb even more knowledge of how our clothing communicates our sense of identity to the world. You can also safely inject a love of playing dress-up, fashion, and a previous background in theater into this story. So when I desperately needed an idea for a cohesive body of work (as I had started renting a studio in order to paint, but only the pressure of the show offered in conjunction with the rental really got me to focus), I put my own quirky wardrobe to use and costumed myself. Words have always fallen flat as a means to express myself, so finding a visual language with an alphabet of costumes and props and wigs provided a way to try and find my voice. Each painting is based on a photo I take with my cell phone; a selfie that seeks to embody a different persona or to channel a character that represents a chaotic third other, a misunderstood or complicated role to reflect the intricacies of life as a human. Many of my portraits are also seeking a more inclusive language surrounding the feminine, separated from the concept or socialization of gender, a way to define beauty that is bold and resilient and brave.
Another surprise, in addition to how much I enjoyed this work and continue to find inspiration within these parameters, is the positive response of an outside audience to the portraits. And want pictures of my face in their homes! As I created these larger-than-life guardians for myself, I have found that other people want that feeling or presence for themselves as well. This started as such a deeply personal examination of self, and I am so grateful to have had the time to develop this project in private while simultaneously finding the delight in its life outside my studio walls. It brings me a tremendous amount of fulfillment and joy that these paintings could evoke even a tiny amount of shared feelings and experiences within others.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
The desire from the beginning has been to inspire others to see themselves in new light, and escape from whatever box or binary that holds them captive. I want to find a way to help people embody their own complexity and nuance. It took awhile to reach this point of feeling confident about my own paintings, and now I am excited to devote more time and energy to this foundational belief and expand beyond the limitations of my own style/medium and face/body. One extremely meaningful project I did in 2021 was to curate a show with 16 other artists creating their own version of one of my early self-portraits, from photography to couture clothing to performance, etc. I am also trying to see this work through an anti-capitalist lens, because as soon as we allow ourselves to be defined by these boxes, someone is going to tell us we need to buy something in order to stay there. Really any of the -isms that are dividing people have a tee shirt that someone wants to sell you, let alone the way we judge people or separate ourselves by our appearances. As I think about my artistic practice as one that has my regular ol’ human body as my base material, and then I add a story to that form by way of material objects which carry some sort of meaning or significance, it is all a projected narrative, a fantasy. (And to a lesser degree, that’s what we all get up and do every morning, and then sometimes a second time if we have separate plans for the evening and need to project a different component of our identity.) This has been my mission from the start, to work in community with others as this was not a path to individualism (and I’m afraid it might appear that way) but one toward new possibilities and collaboration. I am trying to create a space to question what we can only see on the surface, to exist beyond the simple categories that were made by our culture or family or society. We’re all just regular ol’ human bodies moving about the world, looking for some semblance of truth and connection, and we’re bigger than the stories we’re told we are allowed to express.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
It is tricky to be an introvert and love flamboyant colors and clothing. The number of people who have seen my work before meeting me will also tell me that they expect me to have brightly colored hair and/or a more outgoing personality. Having an artistic practice about yourself is generally such a bizarre place to live, and putting it in terms of how I have clothed myself over the years also feels like a very unique framework to consider. I wish I could tell you that I’ve officially learned or unlearned this lesson, but I think my entire life will be spent trying to match my outsides to my insides. Even still, I never would have thought it possible to be comfortable wearing some of the clothing I now own until the paintings showed me I could. The inability to separate outgoing and sociable personality expectations of someone who is wearing a hot pink suit is a belief I did not realize I had internalized until I began this work. Allowing myself to still be anxious or shy around people while wearing an outfit that looks like it was made from outdated curtains or grandma’s couch is space I can now navigate. There have been plenty of straightforward lessons along the way, both as an artist and a small business owner, but this is by far the most profound. I had no idea going into this that it would completely change my life and sense of self.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.laurenepeters.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauren.e.peters/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laurenepetersartist/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-e-peters/
Image Credits
Personal photo AND wigs photo: Jen Polillo Studios