LAURA DUERWALD

Laura Duerwald (b. 1961) is an American abstract painter whose practice explores materiality, repetition, and the experiential qualities of landscape. Through layered surfaces, intricate patterning, and the incorporation of organic materials, her paintings evoke a tactile and atmospheric sense of place, reflecting the shifting conditions of time, weather, memory, and topography. Her works balance structure and intuition, building quiet rhythmic fields that encourage sustained, meditative looking.

Working through processes of accumulation, erosion, and repetition, Duerwald creates paintings in which surface becomes both image and record. The undulating rhythms and densely worked textures embedded within her compositions often recall geological formations, mapping systems, woven structures, or natural phenomena, while remaining resolutely abstract. Her practice is deeply informed by the physical and psychological experience of landscape, allowing changing internal and external conditions to become embedded within the work itself. The artist frequently incorporates acrylic, ink, dyes, and eco-printed muslin on linen, creating materially rich works that carry both physical and atmospheric depth.

Born and raised in Dix Hills, New York, Duerwald received a BFA in Illustration from Syracuse University before moving to New York City, where she worked as an illustrator and graphic designer. She later turned her focus to painting, studying at the Art Students League of New York, undertaking independent studies in Italy, and earning an MFA in painting from Marywood University.

Duerwald has been awarded fellowships and residencies at the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the NES Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States in both solo and curated exhibitions, including presentations in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, and Maine, alongside national and international group exhibitions.

Richeldis Fine Art is delighted to present a new body of work from Duerwald’s ongoing Selkie series, currently presented in the Collectors Lounge at the Barcelona gallery. Named after the mythological selkies of Nordic and Celtic folklore — beings that shift between seal and human form — the series reflects themes of transformation, permeability, memory, and connection to elemental landscape. Combining layered surfaces with eco-printed muslin and richly worked painterly textures, the works possess a quiet luminosity that oscillates between painting, textile, and topographical trace.

She currently lives and works in the foothills of the Endless Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania.