Lorette C Luzajic
Artist member since 2018
Toronto , Ontario
"A superhuman effort to coalesce the imaginative world." Moray Mair, Mutant Space Arts
"Luzajic, like Wonder Woman, is her own institution." Paul Robinson, Blog Critics
"Queen of the fantastic." Carrie Shibinsky, Art Bomb Daily
"I am driven by eclectic curiosity, and by the joy of juxtaposition. My work is a curiosity cabinet and an apothecary of magic potions and spells. It is poetry, and a surreal dream. It is the frantic pace of the city and the magnificent silence of the night. It is about love and death and the sacred and inane, and the absurdity and beauty in all things."
Compared to Rauschenberg, Schwitters, and Basquiat, and inspired by Warhol, Joseph Cornell, Robert Motherwell, and Antoni Tapies, Lorette C. Luzajic wears her influences on her sleeve. Appropriating relentlessly from art history, advertising, music, poetry, fiction, culture, religion, and travel, she plunders everything but creates work that is original and entirely her own.
Lorette writes, "A collagist is always looking, always deconstructing and reconstructing. From dentist waiting room magazines to church hymnals to art history masterpieces at the museum to nightclub flyers, my mind is constantly snipping, juxtaposing, discovering, experimenting, replacing, gluing over, scraping back layers, recontextualizing."
Lorette's use of materials reflects the same montage quality as the varied concepts that inspire her. She uses acrylic paint, gouache paint, watercolour, spray paint, ink, fabric paint, chalk pastel, oil stick, oil pastel, crayons, pencil crayons, graphite, found papers, found photographs, found images, house paint, plaster, silicone, pen, markers, cosmetics, glues, stickers, and any other media she can incorporate.
Lorette studied for and received a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree in journalism, but went on to focus on creative work in visual art, photography, poetry, and writing about art. She is the editor of The Ekphrastic Review at www.ekphrastic.net, a journal dedicated exclusively to literature inspired by visual artwork, and has published hundreds of poems and stories in nearly 200 magazines, journals and blogs. She teaches workshops on ekphrastic writing and on art without drawing. Her visual art shows regularly at home in Toronto, Canada, including at the Spoke Club, the Gladstone Hotel, Artusiasm Gallery, the Flying Pony Gallery, the Ritz Carlton, the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, the Toronto Artist Project, Hashtag Gallery, Project Gallery, and more. She has also shown work further afield, including Brisbane, Bristol, Edinburgh, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, New York, and other American cities. She recently participated in an international artists symposium in Tunisia, working to create paintings for the Ministry of Culture and to show in two exhibitions in Tunis and Hammamet. She also visited Mexico recently for a duet exhibition at Le Cirque Galeria in Merida, Yucatan and a number of group shows at other venues.
Her mixed media paintings have found homes all over the world, and hang in collections alongside originals by Miro, Erte, Dubuffet, Ellsworth Kelly, Jim Dine, Jane Ash Poitras, and Benjamin Chee Chee.
www.mixedupmedia.ca
Work
When All Else Fails, Join the Circus
Lorette C Luzajic
Toronto- 30" x 72" x 1.5"
- TRY: $150 BUY: $3000
Don't Let What You Are Get in the Way of What You Can Be
Lorette C Luzajic
Toronto- 48" x 48" x 1.5"
- TRY: $125 BUY: $2500
Enter the Wonderful World of Amazing Live Sea Monkeys, Own a Bowlfull of Happiness
Lorette C Luzajic
Toronto- 60" x 40" x 1"
- TRY: $150 BUY: $3000
You May Have Already Won Some Valuable Prizes
Lorette C Luzajic
Toronto- 72" x 40" x 1"
- TRY: $175 BUY: $3500
I Was Born With a Plastic Spoon in My Mouth
Lorette C Luzajic
Toronto- 60" x 40"
- TRY: $175 BUY: $3500
Inside the Studio
Q+A
Favourite artist(s) right now
David Fullarton, Mitchell Clark Meller, Raymond Saunders, Rock Therrien, Rauschenberg, Whistler, Hopper, Basquiat, Bruegel, Motherwell, Fernando Garcia Ponce-Macay, Michelle Mikesell, Squeak Carnwrath, Jerome Rochette, Line Juhl Hansen, Vilhelm Hammershoi, Victor Vega, Marie Bortolotto, Bea Mahan, Javier de Cea, Antoni Tapies, Franz von Stuck, Massimo Nota, Jean Leon Gerome, Dorion Scott, Ali Rashid
Why is art important to you?
Art adds meaning, enchantment, symbolism, and beauty to our surroundings and our souls
Beverage of choice
Rioja or shiraz
Favourite musical artist / band right now
Arcade Fire, Johnny Cash, Michael Jackson, Artie Shaw, James, Lucinda Williams, Matisyahu, Simon and Garfunkel, Eminem, Mozart
Only thing you need when you leave the house
Red or hot pink lipstick
Accolades
2018
Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment
Best Painting $5000
Residencies
2017
Ministry of Arts and Culture, Tunis, Tunisia
Symposium of International Contemporary Artists
Education
2000
Ryerson University
Journalism