Our Spotlight on the Arts for December 2024 shines brightly on local artist Lauren Brumbach! Lauren is the winner of the 2024 Art Walk contest!

Every September, the Town of Leonardtown celebrates their designation as an official Arts & Entertainment District. Part of this celebration includes the annual Art Walk contest which is coordinated by St. Mary’s County Arts Council. Artists have their work featured at local shops and visitors vote on their favorite pieces. By popular vote, Lauren captured this year’s First Place award!

Tell us about your First Place Art Walk painting!

A few autumns ago, I took a walk in Port Tobacco, Maryland, and had one of those moments. It took me all this time to meet the poet whose words feel like they belong along this bank. This painting, Walking With Wordsworth, is a soft and solitary moment, where poetry, birdsong, and the beauty of nature all have a moment together; a moment I’m so grateful to have been a witness to. 

I don’t often paint scenes that include bodies of water. This is maybe the second or third that I’ve done in my career. I found the softness of the water and the mysteriousness of the dark trees so inescapably romantic. It felt like a moment the great poets would dream about.

William Wordsworth was a poet with a particular fondness of nature. He often personified it and treated nature like a companion. I often personify my paintings and they all contain some measure of nature imagery or color. This is why I felt Wordsworth and his poetry belonged in this space. 

How long have you been painting?

I have been painting since I learned how to hold a brush! There are photos and a pre-school video to prove it. I’ve been painting professionally for about five years now and have been entirely full-time for just over a year. 

Do you have a favorite style and media? 

My choice to work in oil paint stems from an innate desire to honor and preserve the movement, sound, color and life around me. Oil paint not only yields rich and dynamic color but the nature of its slow drying time and thick application elevate the overarching story of my abstract and realistic work — to pay attention and be present in still moments.

I find that the moments that make a season feel multitudinous are actually quite small; moments that if you’re not paying attention, you could miss. This is reflected in the drifting gold pieces found throughout my expressionist paintings. When I visit the old farms of my past, their creeks, hills and valleys, I am reminded of true Grace.

Overwhelmed in this comforting beauty, I am inspired to create similar spaces through my paintings reflecting poetry, song, prayer and vista, so that others may also feel safe and filled with incredible wonder.


What are a few of your other interests or occupations outside of art?

Oooo I love to read just about everything – fantasy, mystery, art history and lots of poetry. Agatha Christie and Neil Gaiman are my favorite authors and Mary Oliver, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, Shel Silverstein and Walt Whitman are some of my favorite poets. I also enjoy cooking, taking walks and drinking tea :).

Thank you, Lauren, for being a valued part of our artistic community!

Photos provided by artist. Photo of Lauren credited to Steven Glynn Photography.

Links of interest:

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