Lori Woodcock, Oil and Multi-Media Artist.

About the Artist

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Lori Woodcock is an artist and teacher who devoted 26 years to bringing art to the lives of her students and community as a secondary art teacher in central Indiana. She is now using her knowledge in the classroom to guide future art educators as the Art Education Lecturer at Indiana State University. Her research consists of using oil paint and mixed media to build moments of joy that will grab the mind of the viewer for a moment in time and transport them to a meditative or happier space. She has helped to place various murals throughout her community and has exhibited recently at Hendricks Live! and the Yang Family University Art Gallery in Indiana, the Alexander Brest Gallery in Florida, the M.G. Nelson Family Gallery in Illinois, and The D’Art Center in Virginia. When she’s not in the classroom or studio she can be found exploring small towns with her husband and stopping to take photos of all the joyful things she finds along the way.

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Artist Statement

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I have never forgotten the feeling of sitting in the Indiana woods, drawing all the trees and flowers around me. As I watched the way the flora moved and contorted in search of the sun, it fueled a lifelong love of nature. In my work, I seek to capture those fleeting moments of joy and connection.

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Using bold color and a dynamic interplay of shape and form in the negative space, I invite the viewer to experience the natural world how I do: as brightly colored textures and shapes in constant flux. I see poetry in a row of daylilies as they--like a choreographed dance--lean over in unison, seeking the last rays of light or in the way branches of a tree fight for purchase creating inconceivable patterns as they seek out the sun. Seizing these moments of fleeting beauty and presenting them on canvas creates a pocket of joy allowing these ephemeral sentinels to resonate long after the experience has passed.

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This is the prevailing purpose of my art. To resonate with the viewer, to make the fleeting permanent, and to capture and hold onto beauty in what can be a very ugly world. The world needs more joy, deeper breaths, pauses that lead to smiles, and awareness beyond oneself. Juxtaposing overlapping and transparent shapes in the composition creates more avenues for discovery, while bold-colored flowers and trees in the foreground tug at one’s memories of a walk through the park. Inherently posing the question “why has it been so long since this path was last traversed?”  

Illuminating these moments in bold, often unrealistic colors, and collaging them with shapes, textures, fabric, and or wax, confronts the viewer with a new way of seeing. It strips away the ordinary and invites the viewer to look upon the world with fresh eyes. I am not interested in representing the literal world but rather the emotions I feel when confronted with a delicate bloom or contorting branch. In my world, a tree is never just a tree. It’s a dancer, moving through space, a fellow living thing offering illumination, deserving commemoration.