About the Artist

Laura Cannon has worked across a range of disciplines including painting, printmaking, illustration, and photography. Her main concentration is on her semi-abstract watercolor works on canvas.

Laura earned her BFA Degree in studio art in 2012 from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. She has worked in digital printing, screen printing, and now works part-time remotely for a Florida-based printing company when she is not in her studio painting.

She recently made the move back to Florida after living in Charleston, SC and is currently involved in a series of work from her travels and of her home state. Switzerland, New Zealand, Portugal, and Florida are the main focus of her current creations.

Her works are featured in private collections throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

About Artist’s Work:

When I first began painting for “Florida Blues” we were about a 1 1/2 years into the pandemic and I was living back in Florida.

My inspiration well was running dry since most of my works the last few years have been inspired by my trips abroad. Considering all things “travel” were paused for the unforeseeable future, I tackled my love/hate relationship with this swamp land we call Florida in the best way I knew how—paint it out.

Having lived in Central Florida and South Florida almost all of my life, I had an endless supply of photo references and memories tied to the locations I chose to paint.

Once started, the myriad of colors, especially the blues, captured my imagination, and that was my driving force behind these works. My goal was to capture this seemingly simple subject matter and portray the ever changing shades of Florida blues.

When you live in an area for so long, you sometimes stop seeing the beauty in your everyday surroundings, the views outside your window. You begin to take those views for granted.

Most of the pieces I created depict the beautiful waterways and wildlife refuges. As I finished each painting, I began to appreciate my home state of Florida and the natural beauty it has to offer: The 4:00 Summer storms and the strong contrast between the bright sun and the looming black clouds. The marshes with wild flowers and towering palms. The breathtaking moment when you witness bioluminescence, whether it is for the first or the one-hundredth time.

Creating this series helped me appreciate Florida’s beauty again and opened my eyes to this tropical landscape with a fresh point of view. Those scenic drives inland to the coast are now just a little more special.

About the Artist

Paula Camacho is a Colombian-born painter and installation artist based in Miami, Florida. She graduated from the University of Central Florida in the Fall of 2019 with her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and a Minor in Digital Design. Paula’s work has been featured in 11 publications and was recently distinguished as a top contributor by Fearsome Critters Mag. She was an artist in residence at the New York Academy of Art in 2019, and has participated in a number of exhibitions throughout the southeast.

Artist Statement

My practice, ultimately a visual exploration into the theory of immanence, is heavily influenced by transcendental experiences and my consequent investigations into Taoism, shamanism, and Jungian philosophy.

From an experiential point of departure, I strive to reconcile external and internal phenomena with my two and three-dimensional works, recognizing their inherent oneness and interplay. My compositions aim to render, or at the very least intimate the relationship between earth and psyche—arousing a deeper curiosity about our unity and interaction with all dimensions of nature.

A profound reverence for nature’s complex, entropic perfection is the animist intensity that is integral to my process.

Artist Bio

As early as 3 years old, Corinne became a student of watercolors and acrylics while under the tutelage of her maternal grandmother. Art and creativity quickly became, and are still, an integral part of her daily bread since.

After graduating college with a BFA in Graphic Design, she worked in the field for a while but became jaded after the death of her father. The need for more human interaction, freedom and physicality led Corinne to become a licensed massage therapist while continuing to freelance design and paint. She’s greatly influenced by the stories of us—exploration of form, emotion, feminism, culture/ethnicity, history, social constructs, spirituality, and her own misadventures as a “tall southern biracial bbw with hair and soul as wild as the day is long”—her heritage is a big source of personal pride and curiosity. Simply, she’s a figurative artist with penchants for acrylic paints, love, the underdog and that wide open space outside the box.

Artist Statement

Inspired by human condition and spiritual fortitude, most of my current work is a tribute to enough—having had enough, recognizing being enough—raw dignity, advocacy of feminine power and endurance, positive and dynamic Black representation, and the fight for the greater good.

These last few years, 2020 in particular, have loudly and boldly shown us a mostly hidden ugliness that exists among society, yet also revealed a resilience, righteousness and complex beauty dwelling within us too. Despite the opposition of blind complacency, denial, and the bevy of emotions swirling about (like anger, frustration, desperation, fear to name a few), we turn a spotlight to injustices, and we show up and show out to rally against them with our middle fingers high and our best foot forward. There is brazen hope, there is love and mercy, there is relief, and inclusive higher ground to stand firmly upon with fearless pride, unequivocal resolve and an unwavering knowledge that Black people, like all people, matter too.

What does “Gaze” mean to you & how do you connect it to your work?

it means “staring back”…lock eyes and challenge the stares and glares. this piece “they say it’s s’pose ta rain” is specifically about looking at the adversity and not batting a lash…been there, done that, STILL wearing my crown despite it all.

Find her on

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lucidbirdgal

Website: https://www.lucidbirdgallery.com/