Russo Lee Gallery is pleased to announce our representation of Laura Domela.
Laura Domela is a painter, photographer, and mixed media artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. She was born in Anchorage, Alaska, moved to Southern California at age five. She lived and worked in Los Angeles until relocating to Portland in 1995 to attend art shcool. She earned her BFA in Painting and Drawing from the Oregon College of Art & Craft in 1999. Domela has exhibited work in the United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland, and the United States. Her paintings and photographs are in numerous private and public collections, including the Portland Art Museum, Komatsu Silicon America, Beaverton OR, Mazama Capital Management, Portland OR, Schnitzer Investment Corp., Meyer Memorial Trust, and The Neon Museum in Las Vegas, NV.
Domela’s work explores the complexities of human emotion and behavior, often examining themes of fear, vulnerability, and resilience through layered compositions that merge organic forms and festive colors with dark shapes and stark geometries. In addition to painting and drawing, Domela studied portrait photography with renowned photographers Platon and Max Vadukul. Her photographic work has appeared on magazine covers, book and CD/album covers, billboards, and posters for numerous stage productions. Her studio is located in Northeast Portland, where she works most of the year. In the summer, she lives aboard a boat in Southeast Alaska—surrounded by incredible scenery and wildlife—where she paints in a small, improvised studio space onboard.