bio:

Laria Saunders is an award-winning photographer with a passion for taking photos that spans three decades. She was born in Boston and comes from four generations of artists. Her mother's side are the painters and photographers and her father's side are the actors, dancers and performers.

Laria is a UCLA graduate in World Arts & Culture and a self-taught photographer. She started off as a classical dancer and dance teacher (Classical Indian /Odissi) until she became disabled.

For the last twenty years, she has been suffering with a mysterious illness that includes ten recalcitrant pain syndromes such as daily migraines, demyelinating disease and Fibromyalgia.

Severe pain has caused over eight months of hospitalization and she has sought treatments all over the world and continues her daily fight to manage the pain despite multiple severe drug allergies.

After near total isolation in India for many years, she says could no longer do normal photography. Laria started her path with alternative photography with a five-year abstract collection by moving with her camera and called it, "Despite the Pain."

Five years, Five collections to form one snapshot about the evolution of perspectives and transformation from suffering from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic (see statement).

Since 2012, Laria has began experimenting with iPhone abstract art. This new mobile medium has enabled her to stay creative despite being bedridden most days.

Each mobile, abstract painting is created with many photo layers taken with the smart phone. Then each image is collaged and processed with editing apps such as Enlight.

She is normally drawing upon the issues she faces in her daily battles with long-term illness. She is also inspired by nature, philosophy, art and the issues of day.

For Laria, creating abstracts blurs lines and merges objects, providing a poetic portal to altered states of consciousness. She does abstracts to get different perspectives and to make sense of things.

This process allows her to enter a world that gives her a sense of empowerment and to attempt to convey suffering or a brief moment of normalcy. She says, "It connects dots in a world that I cannot always connect in my own life."

She lives in Denver with her boyfriend, James who has been devotedly by her side for eleven years.

education:

Bachelor of Arts - University California Los Angeles - World Arts & Culture - summa cum laude - alumni arts scholar recipient.

awards:

2013-1014 Light & Composition Magazine - 1st Place | Photo of the Month | 15th Month

2014 Light & Composition Magazine - Top 100 Photographers

2012-2013 The Peace Project Exhibit

Deep Ellum Artwalk, Dallas, Texas Landmark Arts Building, Chelsea, NY The Whole 9 Gallery, Culver City, CA Gallery Expo, Long Beach, CA. Showcase Gallery, Santa Ana, CA. Art4All People, Malibu, CA. Swarm Gallery, Oakland, CA.

2012 The Abstracts, Group Show at Linus Gallery, Pasadena, CA. 2012 Get Real 1650 Gallery, Silver Lake, CA.

2011 Two Artists Show, GrooveWorx Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

2010 Eden Arts, UK - 3rd place

2010 Momentum: Images of Dance, CT - Honorable Mention

2010 Art Scene Today - Honorable Mention, published

2010 Art Slant - Showcase Finalist, published

2010 Projekt 30 - Awarded online exhibition- group show group shows:

2010 Photos with Words, Photo Place Gallery/VPW, Vermont USA