{"id":19416,"date":"2025-06-14T21:07:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T21:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/?p=19416"},"modified":"2025-06-14T21:07:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T21:07:07","slug":"nancy-staub-laughlin-building-worlds-from-light-and-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/?p=19416","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Staub Laughlin: Building Worlds from Light and Color"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nancy Staub Laughlin<\/a> isn\u2019t trying to fit into a box. She works in pastel and photography, and instead of choosing one over the other, she brings them together in ways that feel both grounded and dreamlike. She earned her BFA from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, and over the years, her work has been shown in galleries and museums along the East Coast. Her pieces are also part of corporate and private collections, and she\u2019s been interviewed and written about in various publications. The late Sam Hunter, a respected art critic and historian, once called her work \u201crefreshingly unique\u201d\u2014and that phrase still fits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laughlin’s art is full of detail and intention, but not in a rigid way. What she makes feels like a careful invitation. She sets the stage, but there\u2019s room for you to wander. She\u2019s not just showing you what\u2019s there\u2014she\u2019s asking you to slow down and look<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Let\u2019s talk about a few of her works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe Anticipation of Spring Allure\u201d<\/strong> is 22 by 58 inches. It\u2019s pastel on paper combined with a photograph. The photo, she says, is of a dahlia from her own garden. She sprayed it with water in sunlight to create a kind of frozen sparkle\u2014a moment of natural magic caught just right. Then she pairs that photo with a pastel composition that includes a wintery landscape and soft peach zinnias. It\u2019s a season in tension. Winter hasn\u2019t let go yet, but spring is pushing through, and in that overlap, she finds beauty. The image doesn\u2019t declare one thing\u2014it lingers in the space between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s something Laughlin does often. Her art doesn\u2019t always rush to resolution. She\u2019s more interested in how things shift\u2014how light touches form, how nature crosses into abstraction, how photography and pastel overlap in a way that feels quiet but alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe Blossoming of Froth\u201d<\/strong> is larger\u201431 by 55 inches\u2014and again combines pastel and photography. This time, she\u2019s looking at the edge where land meets sea. Sea spray turns into blossoms. Ocean foam and spring flowers become part of the same dream. This isn\u2019t about literal representation. It\u2019s about feeling your way into a world where everything is lush, a little surreal, and carefully composed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a kind of softness in her palette\u2014a leaning into pastels not just as a medium but as a mood. The work feels fresh without being loud. It invites closeness. You can imagine standing right there, watching sea foam curl into petals, watching sunlight stretch across the water. Laughlin isn\u2019t separating nature from imagination\u2014she\u2019s showing us that they live in the same place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then there\u2019s \u201cThe Transition to Spring,\u201d<\/strong> a 24 x 33 inch piece, again blending pastel with photography. Here, she says she aims to immerse the viewer in her world of \u201ccolor, light, dimension, and beauty.\u201d And that really does get to the heart of what she\u2019s doing. The work is carefully arranged\u2014crafted through a long process that balances control with intuition. You can feel that nothing in these pieces is random, even though the images themselves feel light, almost like they\u2019re floating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her process matters. She doesn\u2019t just snap a photo and sketch around it. She starts with a vision, builds the photo, then surrounds it with pastel until it all clicks together. It\u2019s not a collage. It\u2019s not traditional realism either. It\u2019s something in between\u2014its own space. She calls it \u201cmy radiant and captivating world.\u201d That may sound bold, but when you look at the work, it makes sense. She\u2019s not painting what she sees. She\u2019s creating a version of reality that reflects how she experiences<\/em> beauty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s where her work really lands. It\u2019s personal, but not private. It opens a door and lets you in. Whether it\u2019s garden flowers sprayed with sunlight or sea foam imagined as blossoms, she\u2019s crafting something generous\u2014an offering of stillness, wonder, and layered detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nancy Staub Laughlin doesn\u2019t follow a trend or chase after big statements. She stays close to her process, close to the quiet transformation of nature, and close to the gentle pull of color and light. And in doing so, she gives us work that\u2019s not just \u201crefreshingly unique\u201d\u2014it\u2019s quietly necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nancy Staub Laughlin isn\u2019t trying to fit into a box. She works in pastel and photography, and instead of choosing one over the other, she brings them together in ways that feel both grounded and dreamlike. She earned her BFA from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, and over the years, her work has been<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19416","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artist"},"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19421,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416\/revisions\/19421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}