Following the birth of their children, artist Laura Naples and her sister, Kristen Georgie, challenged each other to paint every week. Even though they lived over a thousand miles apart — Naples in Cleveland and Georgie in Atlanta — they kept in touch by posting their respective work to a shared Instagram account. “That Instagram account was essentially a conversation between the two of us,” Naples says. Both sisters developed their own styles and color palettes, and in time, their online endeavor “ended up growing into two separate studio practices,” she says.
Lutto and Leve are Naples’s meditations on the balance between clean lines and gestural, free-form marks. She uses diluted acrylic paint to create whorls of peach and taupe, punctuated by inked staccato, letting the work take on a life of its own as it drips and dries. “I like to explore the organic, in terms of the medium I use,” she says. “I like to watch what happens when the paint moves itself around.” Despite the energetic movement of each composition, Naples says many viewers find her work calming and peaceful, particularly over the past nine months of upheaval. “What greater compliment than to feel like something you made contributed to the sense of well-being for someone,” she says, “especially when things are hard.”
