Photo by Michael Donahue // Buy this photo
Artist Laura Painter Stafford
Laura Painter Stafford got serious about art after painting pictures of trout on a bar for a party at her home. One of the guests, a fisherman, said he wanted to buy it. “I said, ‘It’s yours,’” said Stafford, 34.
Other guests began noticing some of her old abstract and realistic paintings stacked in piles. “People started going through them and bringing them out.”
Photo by Michael Donahue
Artist Laura Painter Stafford
That’s when Stafford decided to seriously pursue art. She’s been painting and showing her work steadily now for 10 years. Her recent collection of paintings, “Presents in Creation,” is on view through March 31 at Perry Nicole Fine Art at 3086 Poplar.
A Memphis native, Stafford grew up painting. Her art-loving parents used to take family outings every Sunday to Memphis Brooks Museum or Dixon Gallery and Gardens. Stafford took art at the Hutchison School.
She switched her major from art to advertising at the University of Mississippi, where she graduated in 1997.
After she got back into painting, Stafford was inspired one day to pair Bible verses with her paintings. She chose a verse and read it as she painted. One of the first verse inspirations was from Ephesians 4:26: “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” The painting depicted a bright yellow setting sun with red trees.
Stafford writes the verse on the back of the canvas. “There is something in that painting that I want you to look deeper into. I want you to look at it and say, ‘What does that (verse) have to do with that painting?’ And I would love for someone to be interested enough to pick up the Bible and learn more.”
She works on several paintings at the same time. She writes the verse on a card “and puts that card right in front of the painting. Or it might be on a sheet of paper stuck to the wall beside it.”
If she finishes the painting and the verse doesn’t fit, she’ll look for a new verse.
Stafford tries not to duplicate the verse, but she might use half of one she used in a previous painting.
She searches the Bible in the mornings before her children go to school or at night after they go to bed. If she ever runs out of verses, she’ll “start over. I don’t think you can ever run out. I’ve probably just done a teeny-tiny portion in 10 years.”
Her works feature bits and pieces of places, including Idaho, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, as well as Stafford’s imagination.
Architectural forms range from churches to silos to a gazebo. The church in one painting is “several different ones. I took the roof I liked of one, the side of another and the window of another, and kind of pieced them together.
The verse that goes with that painting is taken from Psalm 139:5: “You have freed me from my chains.”
“I like the thought that God can free you from your chains. And, also, the church looks free ’cause the doors are open.”
One painting in the show began as a commission for her church, Second Presbyterian Church, but ended up Stafford’s donation. The verse is “On this rock I will build my church.”
Describing a painting, Stafford said, “You kind of see the light, which is the haze, but you can’t really see it. That’s kind of like His presence. God is everywhere, but he’s waiting to be found.”
The verse with that painting is from Job 9:10-11: “He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted. When he passes me I cannot see him; when he goes by I cannot see him.”
“I think Laura is very good at speaking with color,” said Nicole Haney, co-owner of Perry-Nicole. “Her color is probably one of the strongest attributes in her work. Secondly, I like the religious aspect. Very few artists will do that and do it proudly and do it well. And she does.”
Stafford said she gave a lot of thought in the beginning to using Bible verses with her paintings. She didn’t think it would be right to use them if she just wanted “to sell a painting. If I believe in what I’m saying and I’m doing it to glorify God. That’s the difference.”
Contact Michael Donahue at 529-2797 or e-mail donahue@commercialappeal.com.
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