about
Laria Saunders was born in Boston and grew up there and in New York and Los Angeles. Since 2012, she has began experimenting with mobile art. This new mobile medium has enabled her to stay creative despite chronic daily migraines and nine other painful conditions. She is a former professional photographer and classical dancer/ teacher (Classical Indian /Odissi) until she became disabled by chronic migraine and spinal cord injury in 1998.
Laria has sought treatments all over the world and has been hospitalized over eight months. She has mostly lived in a cave for decades due to extreme medication allergies and has only recently found potential help to manage the pain.
Laria first started her visual art path with alternative photography creating a five-year abstract collection by moving with her camera and called it, "Despite the Pain" - see statement for more information on this series.
Since 2012, Laria has been exclusively creating digital collage photo art paintings. She is represented by ArtLifting (rep disabled) and lives in Denver, Colorado with her partner, James.
Her process is to do walk-abouts collecting a library of textures, colors, lines and shapes. She then uses an app best for collage/blending. Most often dozens of images are used in one painting. Paintings take several hours to several weeks and her series work takes 2-8 weeks.
She is most inspired by nature, philosophy (particularly Integral Theory) and ideas about transformation from suffering (see statement for more process details).
education:
Bachelor of Arts - University California Los Angeles - World Arts & Culture - summa cum laude - alumni arts scholar recipient.
Laria's artwork has been purchased by:
Google
Microsoft
Warner Media
Woodlands Resort
Chicago O'Hare Airport VIP Suite
Slack Denver
and more...
awards:
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