The Dooryard Gallery--Laura Ibbotson

Laura Ibbotson is a landscape painter with versatility in both watercolor and oil . She enjoys each media
type for different reasons yet combines these with her style, perspective, and subject matter. For
Ibbotson, oil creates a substantially thick, and heavy opaqueness. Conversely, watercolor is light and airy;
combined with dry brush and pencil techniques, it creates vistal ike light-filled atmospheric effects.
However, the employment of each medium typifies her style with lower contrasting muted colors,
soft organic shapes, and soft edges. Landscapes are her subject matter of choice because of their awe
inspiring sense of beauty and order. Ibbotson always tries to reveal other natural subject matter by
capturing perspectives which have been overlooked.

Ibbotson studied painting at Wisconsin Lutheran College and received her B.A. in 2003. Since then she has
pursued artist residencies, starting with a residency at Whitefish Dunes State Park in Door County,
Wisconsin. Ibbotson was also one of twenty artists-in-residence hosted at the Forbes Trinchera Ranch in
Fort Garland, Colorado, with work from the residency published in American Artist Magazine. Her paintings
in response to these residencies and her other work have been exhibited in shows organized by the
Maryland Federation of Art; the Missouri Watercolor Society; the Anderson Arts Center, and the Forbes
Gallery in New York. Recently, she received a grant from the Mary Knohl Suitcase Fund for her Forbes
residency.