The Tulsa, Oklahoma native, Laura Robb, entered art school at the age of 16. She has studied under Michael Aviano and Richard Schmid. Robb's art earned her a high honor when she received the John F. and Anna Lee Stacey Scholarship, a study stipend juried by members of the National Academy of Western Art in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She since has traveled and painted in France, Spain, Mexico, and Guatemala.

Robb had been exhibiting in Oklahoma for 12 years, when she arrived in Taos, New Mexico, in 1986. Three years past before her reputation was launched and from that point Robb has moved steadily upward.

Robb works between three mediums- oils, watercolors and pastels-but she is most drawn to the richness of oils. Although she is well known for her landscapes and figure studies, her primary focus always has been her still lifes.

Robb is a teacher and workshop leader who has enjoyed the experience of helping others learn to paint, but now is cutting down to dedicate more time to her own painting.

The artist expresses, "Painting entertains me and, while I don't paint exclusively for the viewer, if I do it right I create an emotion in myself that will ultimately entertain and engage the viewer as well."

Source:

Nancy Gillespie, "An All-Consuming Passion" Art of the West, May/June 2003

Most European paintings in the decade after World War I show a pre-occupation with personal experience. Artists intentionally shifted their focus away from objectively recording the natural world to using objects in nature as a substitute for expressing personal reactions to the natural world. The attitude came to be called Expressionism. The work of Laura Robb is an excellent example of expressionism painting at its best.

The Tulsa, Oklahoma native became a resident of Taos, New Mexico in 1986 because she sensed in that village a strong encouragement for artists and for self-expression in particular. This experience of artistic freedom nourished in her the spontaneity for which she is known. The lines, forms, features and even colors in her work are suggested rather than spelled out. Her canvases are quite thinly painted; often whole passages in a work are rendered in a kind of color short-hand.

Robb's interest in spontaneous gesture has led her to paint rather small paintings. She finds it more conducive to maintaining a free and intuitive approach to a work than if the canvas is too large. Her pieces are often in the diminutive format of 12 x 18 inches or smaller.

Robb's work is definitively original. It maintains the surface appeal of a familiar composition, but beneath the floral bouquet or still life arrangement lies a technique which is fresh, lively and engaging.