RAIR | 2025-26

lauri fader

Fader’s recent work features cautionary tales delivered by eccentric figures navigating surreal dystopian landscapes. Macabre humor suggests the grim reality of our current human condition while offering a dreamy, narcotic alternative.

Laurie Fader has been awarded a Pamela Joy Johnson Southern Visual Fellowship by the MacDowell Foundation, two Great Meadows Foundation awards, a Pollock-Krasner Grant, an Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation emergency award, and a Helen Winternitz Award for excellence in painting from Yale School of Art. She has participated in residencies including the MacDowell Colony, Jentel Foundation, Willapa Bay AIR, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the American Academy in Rome, Scuola Grafica di Venezia, The International School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture in Umbria, Italy, the Alfred & Trafford Klotz Residency in France, and a painting fellowship in Haiti.

She has exhibited recently in the New York region at the Lockwood Gallery, Susan Eley Gallery, Cavalier Gallery, Radiator Gallery, Carter Burden Gallery, First St Gallery, and the Cody Gallery in Arlington, VA.

Fader has an MFA from the Yale School of Art.

She resides in Roswell, New Mexico as a fellow at the RAIR Foundation for a year.

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My recent work explores dystopian landscapes populated by anthropomorphic figures and fauna. There is no hierarchy—each element plays an equal role within the ecosystem of the composition. Through macabre humor and lush imagery, I reflect the harsh realities of the human condition while offering an alternate, dreamlike escape.

Using erratic, curvilinear compositions, I construct vivid, immersive environments that invite viewers to enter and linger. A piece might begin with a familiar motif—a winding road or pastoral scene—only to unravel into something unexpected and uncanny. I work intuitively, layering and reworking until the image reveals something surprising, something alive. Though signs of ecological crisis—floods, fires, darkened skies—may surface, they emerge through chaotic and dynamic transformations rather than overt narrative. These constant shifts in form and color give rise to Jungian archetypes within unsettling, sometimes comic, dreamscapes.

Color is central to my practice. I search for luminous, vibrating combinations that evoke mood and generate space and structure. Each painting becomes an emotional event, shaped as much by intuition and sensation as by deliberate intent, and isn’t finished until the experience is visceral and whimsical.

At the heart of my work are heroic female figures—protectors and survivors on mythic journeys. Often morphed, abstracted, or misshapen, they draw inspiration from a bulbous line drawing by Joan Miró I encountered years ago, as well as from Cycladic fertility idols, Hokusai, Bruegel, Sienese painting, Miyazaki, Mughal miniatures, and the psychological depth of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. These characters navigate dark, surreal worlds that oscillate between hope and despair, recognition and dream.

My creative process is deeply connected to the land. I walk daily, observing with all my senses. A painting might begin as a quick response to something I see—an odd light on shimmering leaves, a sudden cactus bloom—but it grows slowly over time, layer by layer. With patience and empathy, the work evolves into a visual narrative—an emotional map of our world’s fragility and resilience, told through sensation, color, and form. In the end, each piece becomes a kind of cautionary tale, embedded in a dense, enduring composition.

See more of Laurie Fader’s work here.

Instagram: @lcfader