Featuring RU artist in residence Laura Lewis in the RU voices interview series 🎤
Laura is a queer visual artist originally from Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia) currently based in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada). Her practice centers around large-scale figurative oil painting. Her current body of work explores the figure in interior spaces, using a cinematic, Renaissance-inspired aesthetic to investigate the uncanny, psychosomatic conflict, melancholy, and the multiplicities of self.
Working from photographs of people with whom she has personal connections—shot on both digital and analog formats—Lewis merges and interprets these images through expressive techniques like alla prima, reflecting a dynamic, immediate relationship with the medium. Her time at RU also marks a key phase in the development of a new series, culminating in a solo exhibition at a Canadian museum in 2026.
