Laura Berger’s Nude Paintings Are Part of an Artistic Soup

There are some parts of one’s visu­al lan­guage that acts as the thread that ties years of work togeth­er. A style might shift, but a con­sis­tent ele­ment still remains. For artist and illus­tra­tor Lau­ra Berg­er, it’s nudes. For as long as I’ve been look­ing at her art, Lau­ra has always incor­po­rat­ed some form of the nude body—figures round and jovial, like they don’t have a care in the world. This visu­al main­stay has grown along side her as her col­or schemes change or explore an abstract world.

Her lat­est work is the result of a trip to Peru. “I went to Lima for a week on a trip for The Jaunt,” she tells me in an email. “They’re an orga­ni­za­tion that sends artists to dif­fer­ent loca­tions all over the world to seek out inspi­ra­tion and then cre­ate a lim­it­ed edi­tion screen print based on the trip.” Con­tin­u­ing, “[Peru is] such a cool place—ancient ruins in the mid­dle of the city right next to mod­ern glass high-rise build­ings. The food is amaz­ing, some of the best I’ve ever had.” Aside from the good eats, Lau­ra found the visu­al cul­ture inspir­ing. “I love look­ing at tex­tiles from dif­fer­ent cultures—the use of pat­tern, reflec­tion, and col­or has been a source of a lot of inspi­ra­tion for me.” In addi­tion to her paint­ings, Lau­ra has also cre­at­ed 3D fig­urines. “The pre-Colom­bian ceram­ics were also of huge inter­est to me, they were just incredible.”

So, how did this impact her nude paint­ings? Well, it’s a lot like a soup.

It’s always hard to pin­point exact­ly how inspi­ra­tional expe­ri­ences influ­ence one’s work but I believe it all has an impact. I think of this kind of like a soup—I think all of the expe­ri­ences, thoughts, feel­ings, visu­als (basi­cal­ly every­thing we take in) mix with our unique per­son­al­i­ties to cre­ate some­thing new. And of course that’s always shift­ing and chang­ing as we trans­form and grow. Evo­lu­tion with­in cre­ative work seems like a very grad­ual and nat­ur­al unfold­ing process and one that hap­pens with­out a lot of con­scious thought involved, at least for me.

I’m con­tin­u­al­ly in awe of how Lau­ra keeps her work look­ing new and excit­ing but also con­cep­tu­al­ly tight; she does­n’t stray too far from her charm­ing fig­ures, but she deliv­ers fresh work. If you’re look­ing for how to build your prac­tice or your career, she offers this advice that proves you can’t rush the cre­ative process:

Just keep mak­ing work and nev­er give up. Per­sis­tence is key to growth. And I think it’s extreme­ly wise to stop com­par­ing our­selves to oth­ers, but I say that with full acknowl­edge­ment of how dif­fi­cult that is to do!

Artist Laura Berger continually reinvents her nude paintings by getting a fresh perspective on the world. Her most recent paintings are inspired by a trip to Peru.