Laurie Fader is a painter whose work emerges from lived experience and transforms it into richly internalized visual narratives. Her practice bridges observation and memory, exterior place and interior reflection, resulting in paintings that feel both grounded and psychologically expansive. Over the course of a distinguished career, Fader has developed a language of painting that is intuitive, exploratory, and deeply responsive to environment, time, and personal encounter.
Recognized nationally and internationally for her contributions to contemporary painting, Fader’s work has been supported by numerous prestigious awards, fellowships, and residencies. Her paintings invite viewers into layered spaces where memory is not fixed but continually reworked, much like the paint itself.
Education and Artistic Formation
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Laurie Fader’s artistic journey began with a strong academic foundation that combined formal rigor with conceptual depth. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, an environment that encouraged interdisciplinary thinking and experimentation. This early exposure to diverse artistic approaches helped shape her openness to process and transformation.
Fader later completed her Master of Fine Arts at the Yale School of Art, where she received the Helen Winternitz Award for excellence in painting. Yale’s emphasis on critical dialogue and sustained studio practice played a pivotal role in refining her artistic voice. It was here that her commitment to painting as a site of inquiry rather than a fixed outcome became fully embedded in her approach.
Awards, Grants, and Recognition
Fader’s work has been consistently recognized by leading arts organizations and foundations. In 2024, she was awarded the Pamela Joy Johnson Southern Visual Fellowship from the MacDowell Foundation, further affirming her place among accomplished contemporary artists working today.
Her earlier honors include grants from the Great Meadows Foundation in both 2021 and 2018, a Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2000, and the Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Emergency Award in 2002. Each of these acknowledgments reflects sustained excellence and resilience within a long-term artistic practice.
Together, these awards underscore Fader’s ability to evolve while maintaining a coherent and deeply personal visual language.
Residencies and Global Influence
Residencies have played a crucial role in shaping Fader’s artistic development. She has participated in programs at MacDowell, Jentel, Willapa Bay AIR, VCCA, the American Academy in Rome, the International School in Italy, and the Alfred and Trafford Klots Residency in France. Each residency provided not only time and space, but also exposure to new landscapes, histories, and rhythms of daily life.
These environments have directly influenced her work, encouraging a dialogue between place and perception. Rather than documenting locations literally, Fader absorbs their atmospheres, allowing them to resurface later in the studio through abstraction, memory, and repeated revision.
Teaching and Artistic Community
In addition to her studio practice, Laurie Fader has been an influential educator. She has taught at Pratt Institute, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and Goucher College, mentoring emerging artists and fostering thoughtful engagement with painting as both discipline and discovery.
Her teaching mirrors her own artistic philosophy, valuing process, attentiveness, and curiosity. This commitment to community and dialogue has further enriched her practice, reinforcing painting as an ongoing conversation rather than a solitary act.
Exhibitions and Public Presence
Fader’s work has been widely exhibited, with recent highlights including a solo exhibition at The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art in Roswell, New Mexico, in 2025. Her paintings have also been featured in exhibitions and events at ArtCake in Brooklyn, The Lockwood Gallery, Susan Eley Gallery, and Cavalier Gallery in New York City.
These exhibitions reflect the breadth of her audience and the resonance of her work across different contexts, from institutional spaces to independent galleries and fundraising initiatives.
Place, Transition, and Current Practice
After many years based in Louisville, Kentucky, Fader relocated to Roswell, New Mexico, where she is serving as a resident at the RAiR Foundation for the 2025 to 2026 period. This transition marks a significant chapter in her practice, bringing her into a close relationship with the expansive landscapes and distinctive light of the American Southwest.
Roswell’s terrain, open, quiet, and subtly charged, has offered new material for reflection and transformation, reinforcing Fader’s interest in how external experience is filtered through memory and emotion before finding its way onto the canvas.
“Bitter Lake”: From Experience to Internalized Image
One of Fader’s most compelling recent works, Bitter Lake, exemplifies her approach to painting as an evolving process rather than a singular moment. The work originated from a vivid personal experience during an excursion to Bitter Lake in Roswell, New Mexico, undertaken with a fellow resident.
The adventure itself unfolded with unexpected elements: music, a hike down a forbidden gravel road, and an encounter with a park ranger navigating the landscape on a Segway, accompanied by a leashed husky. These details, at once mundane and surreal, left a lasting impression.
Initially, Fader responded by creating a small painting as a direct reflection of the experience. However, this was only the beginning. The image expanded into a larger canvas that underwent endless modifications over time. As the painting evolved, the memory of the original event became increasingly internalized, shifting away from literal depiction toward a more psychological and emotional interpretation.
In Bitter Lake, the surface carries traces of this prolonged engagement. Layers of revision speak to the passage of time, while the composition suggests a place that is remembered rather than seen. The painting embodies Fader’s belief that meaning in art is not fixed but accumulates through attention, repetition, and transformation.
A Practice Rooted in Continuity and Change
Laurie Fader’s work stands as a testament to the power of painting as an ongoing act of inquiry. Drawing from lived experience, academic rigor, and sustained observation, her paintings resist easy resolution. Instead, they invite viewers to linger, to sense the echoes of memory embedded within layered surfaces.
Through decades of practice, teaching, and exploration, Fader has remained committed to painting as a living process, one that honors both the external world and the inner landscapes shaped by time, movement, and reflection.
