Laurie Maves Art
Laurie Maves has always been an artist. She spent her childhood with her family in Freeport, Illinois, along with her larger-than-life imagination, always creating her own reality (often to the chagrin of her small town mid-western parents). There was nothing more she wanted to do, than to make something out of nothing. And if she could make something beautiful, she saw herself as a superhero. While living in Denver, Colorado in the late 1990’s, Laurie took a leap of faith and gradually transitioned from her profession in the non-profit sector as an art therapist to that of a full time fine artist and live performance painter. After nearly two decades of living and working in the Rocky Mountain Region of Colorado, she relocated to the Suncoast of Florida. Currently she resides in Sarasota with her husband, Ralph Guglielmi and maintains a painting studio at the newly established 11th Orange. There you can find her either facilitating expressive workshops or creating large scale abstract expressionistic paintings – images made with an intuitive hand. By focusing on the sacred act of mark making, Laurie finds a meditation in painting and experiences a deep spiritual connection in the act of creating. She finds the unplanned final images are often only the culmination of her exploratory process. By working in this way, she often feels that she is not making the paintings, but rather allows the paintings to make themselves.
Art Therapy and the Expressive Arts
As life can bring us a thousand joys, it can also bring us unpredictable challenges and occasionally life altering losses. Throughout her entire life, fine artist and art therapist Laurie Maves Guglielmi has both formally and informally utilized the creative process to not only find the health in herself, but has had extensive experience in facilitating this process for others. Art and mark making helps one to find a voice and express thoughts, feelings and emotions, that words just simply cannot accommodate. Laurie has over twenty years experience as a masters level art therapist and a lifetime experience as a creative and an artist. Currently she works from her home studio as well as at the 11th Orange, in downtown Sarasota, Florida. 11th Orange is a studio, where Laurie offers large-scale free themed abstract expressive painting classes and private art therapy as well as abstract painting lessons/sessions. Laurie is also able to travel and provide expressive therapy individual or group services at private homes or alternative community settings.
Laurie Maves Art Approach:
“My art and process has certainly changed and evolved over the past 20 years. Historically I would make stylized feminine portraits often inspired by artists like Picasso and Modigliani. I didn’t begin approaching abstract painting until about 10 years ago.
At that time, the paintings and the creative process would cause me a certain amount of anxiety as I never knew where the paintings would land, but I also had this deep drive to “figure out” how to make a “successful” abstract composition. I was always trying desperately to understand the sort of puzzle that is created once you put pen to paper and paint to canvas. But the process was often more difficult than enjoyable.
Then in February of 2018, I enrolled in a three-day intensive workshop led by German artist Bernd Haussmann. Bernd discussed how one approaches the act of creating and painting, combining meditation and mark making. This workshop completely shifted my process to new ways of working without planning, without designing, without composing. The paintings became quick expressions of feeling and reflections or recordings of what became for me a sacred act of making marks. I began closing my eyes while standing at the canvas, focused on my breathing and began a meditation that would work itself out through the application of paint and drawing materials. The paintings became completely intuitive and I found a new freeness in painting that I had never experienced in my life. This is how I am currently approaching my painting, as raw and listening and open to the paintings that want and need to paint themselves. I find I am simply a conduit for the process, which I experience as most beautiful and enlightening.” – Laurie Maves
Customer Review:
“Wow! Michael Griffin and I are blown away! We visited Laurie and her husband and were saying how much we love her signature portrait paintings of women. So, for our wedding gift, she personalized a painting of me adding her flair. She also painted two more to accompany it- a fisher women and golfer because those are my favorite things to do. Seriously the most thoughtful and best gift I’ve ever received!!
When we were visiting, we also bought one of her beautiful abstract paintings that we love. Can’t wait to be a Laurie Maves collector! She is an amazingly talented artist and an even better person.”- Brianna Springer Griffin
Phone number to contact Laurie Maves Art:
941-900-4145
Website: