{"id":19919,"date":"2025-07-28T10:25:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T10:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/?p=19919"},"modified":"2025-07-28T10:25:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T10:25:18","slug":"nancy-staub-laughlin-light-color-and-constructed-realities-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/?p=19919","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Staub Laughlin: Light, Color, and Constructed Realities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nancy Staub Laughlin<\/a> works at the intersection of pastel drawing and photography. Her practice is both visual and conceptual\u2014grounded in traditional materials but focused on constructing a layered visual experience that blurs reality and artifice. Laughlin holds a BFA from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia and has spent decades building a body of work that resists easy classification. She\u2019s shown on the East Coast in galleries and museums, and her work has been featured in different art media. Collectors\u2014corporate and private alike\u2014have taken interest in her vibrant, constructed pieces. Sam Hunter, a well-known art historian and critic, once called her work \u201crefreshingly unique,\u201d a description that still fits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Laughlin doesn\u2019t just capture scenes. She builds them. That\u2019s the essential difference in how her work operates. She sets up still-life arrangements in her studio\u2014carefully curated elements that often include flowers, crystals, glass, and textured materials\u2014and then photographs them under controlled lighting. These photos are not the final product. Instead, they become the foundation. She prints them and begins to work directly over them with pastel, creating what she calls a \u201ccontinuum\u201d between the photographic and the drawn. Her process is slow, deliberate, and immersive. You can feel that in the finished work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of her pieces, The Luminescence of Light<\/em> (27 x 43 inches, pastel on paper, mounted photograph), shows how she threads all of this together. It\u2019s a vivid exploration of texture and light, where nature and abstraction seem to merge into a suspended moment. The salt flats\u2014rendered as frothy, almost effervescent ground\u2014anchor the image. Above or perhaps around it are fluffy dahlias and luminous lavender clematis. The composition plays with perception. Are these flowers placed on the flats? Floating above them? Reflected in some unseen surface?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer is: yes, and no. This is Laughlin\u2019s signature technique\u2014creating layered images that challenge how we think about depth and placement. It\u2019s both real and constructed. The light is not incidental but carefully planned. You don\u2019t stumble into this kind of glow. The lavender clematis, in particular, acts as a hinge in the composition\u2014something that ties it all together, adding a soft radiance that blends with and enhances the color palette. Her pastels don\u2019t overpower the photograph; they work in dialogue with it. The two mediums inform each other without dominating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes this work interesting is its refusal to settle. It\u2019s not a still life, not exactly. And it\u2019s not pure abstraction. It falls somewhere in between. Laughlin calls it a \u201clure\u201d\u2014an invitation into her world. That word is important. She doesn\u2019t try to replicate what she sees. She builds what she wants you to enter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s also a conceptual layer worth noting. By combining ephemeral organic materials\u2014like salt and flowers\u2014with the permanence of photography and the delicacy of pastel, she\u2019s hinting at something deeper. Maybe it\u2019s about time. Or fragility. Or transformation. These aren\u2019t loud messages. They emerge slowly, like the details in her work. You have to sit with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her technique also speaks to her discipline. Pastel, especially on mounted photography, is not forgiving. It requires intention, layering, and control. The fact that her pieces feel both carefully composed and visually fluid is a credit to her years of practice. The result is a surface alive with texture\u2014light catching on color in ways that feel organic and artificial at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Luminescence of Light<\/em> doesn\u2019t rely on shock or bold gestures. Instead, it unfolds. The longer you look, the more you notice\u2014how the light moves, how the colors connect, how the elements don\u2019t just sit but interact. It\u2019s a gentle pull into a world that\u2019s clearly been built, but not in a cold or clinical way. There\u2019s warmth here. There\u2019s care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That might be the heart of Laughlin\u2019s work. It\u2019s built\u2014but it breathes. It\u2019s composed\u2014but never static. She gives you something to explore, but doesn\u2019t explain it all away. The light does the talking. You just have to follow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nancy Staub Laughlin works at the intersection of pastel drawing and photography. Her practice is both visual and conceptual\u2014grounded in traditional materials but focused on constructing a layered visual experience that blurs reality and artifice. Laughlin holds a BFA from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia and has spent decades building a body of work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19919","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\/19919","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=19919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19921,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19919\/revisions\/19921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}