We first discovered Lorette C. Luzajic over at one of our favorite ligmags, Mud Season Review. It was, well, love at first sight. From color to texture, from subtle imagery to bold icons, Lorette’s work gets into your soul. (And as all writers know, titles are important, and her titles are the bomb shizzle. Seriously.)

Lorette is a Toronto-based artist, photographer, and writer. Her work has been shown at the Royal Ontario Museum, the Spoke Club, the Gladstone, Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, the Artist Project, and as a 20 foot billboard in New Orleans. She is the editor of Ekphrastic.net, an online journal of “writing and art about art and writing.” View more of Luzajic’s art at: www.mixedupmedia.ca.

 

“Every technical and philosophical facet of my art is committed to the application of mixed media, redefining the term to include concepts and ideas as well as tangible physical materials. This cross-genre pasticcio is born from and dependent on collage, which naturally experiments with subliminality, intercontextuality and the unexpected narratives that emerge from both playful and planned juxtapositions.

Each work is assembled from an unlimited assortment of tools, themes, genres, and inspirations. A work may be created from acrylic paint, gouache, found papers, chalk pastels, oil sticks, wax crayons, graphite, spray paint, poetry, overheard dialogue, religious ritual, music, mythology, television, and etymology.

My expression springs from my insatiable curiousity, bent humour, the intersection of the sacred and inane, and enchantment with the fruits of human innovation and creativity. To this end, an ongoing lifelong study of visual art history, the arts, and the humanities, is essential to my work.

From serene, minimalist abstractions to frantic pentimenti imbroglio, my work  embraces appropriation and challenges constructs of genre, colour orthodoxy and technical craftsmanship. But the traditional importance of beauty in millennia of art history is a conviction I share. To obtain beauty in every work, I  strive to evoke emotion, achieve mastery of composition, and discover new ways of seeing and defining what is beautiful.”

 

One more goody: You can purchase some of her work in her Etsy shop. Now, go forth and do! We don’t tend to regret the art we buy, but we remember those pieces we don’t. Through April 2017, Lorette is offering readers of Longridge Review a generous 30% discount on her work via the Etsy shop. Use code LONGRIDGE30.