Contributed by Sharon Butler / On October 20, Two Coats of Paint welcomes Lawre Stone from the countryside near Hudson, New York. She is aesthetically as well as socially concerned with ecological displacement and how species adapt, invade, and persist in landscapes reshaped by human intervention. Her paintings reveal the hidden-in-plain-sight world of botanical life.
Stone’s process begins with ink sketches that progress from thin acrylic washes to bold oil gestures, working a kind of metamorphosis on the canvas. Her gestural strokes construct what she describes as “dynamic space” in which vegetation achieves an almost aggressive vitality. These are not the delicate watercolors of traditional botanical illustration, nor are they the domesticated flowers of still life painting. Instead, Stone’s flora have an uncanny, preternatural presence, neither entirely real nor altogether imagined. They seem to bridge observation and dream.
Stone’s botanical art is also extraordinary in its focus on invasive and displaced plants –resilient varieties that thrive in inhospitable environments. By painting these often-ignored plants in detail, she challenges us to look more carefully at unwanted species and rethink our relationship with them. The plants didn’t choose to migrate; they were uprooted by human commerce, climate change, and chance events. Seen as survivors adapting to disaster, their durability is admirable but also unsettling. They seem likely to be here long after humans are extinct.
With her scroll paintings, Stone has taken her work in a new direction. Painted on long rolls of watercolor paper placed on the floor, they depict poppies – celebratedly ambivalent flowers that can yield crucial pain-relieving medications but also highly addictive illegal drugs like heroin as well as legal opioids susceptible to abuse, addiction, and overdose. She combined realistic botanical detail with abstract elements, so that the images look a bit like portraits of people returning the viewer’s gaze, with their own muted but powerful personalities.
Lawre Stone (she/her) holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Her work has been shown in exhibitions at Bernay Fine Art, Great Barrington, MA; the Ely Center for Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT; Furnace Art On Paper, Falls Village, CT; the Institute for Contemporary Art, New York, NY; Joyce Goldstein Gallery, Chatham, NY; LABSpace, Hillsdale, NY; MoMA PS1, New York, NY; Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York, NY; Russell Janis Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Tanja Grunert Gallery, Hudson, NY; and White Columns, New York, NY, among others. Stone received a 2024 NYSCA Individual Artist Regrant for her project “Invasive Beauty: Painting the Displaced Species of Columbia County, NY.”
Lawre Stone, Two Coats of Paint Artist Residency, 22-19 41st Avenue, 6th Floor, Studio #10, Long Island City, NY. Oct 20-27, 2025. Please join us for an Open Studio on Tuesday, Oct 21, 5-7 pm. For more information, or to arrange a studio visit, please contact: STAFF@twocoatsofpaint.com. Please put Lawre Stone in the subject line. Follow Lawre on Instagram @lawrestone
Other info:
Playlist: “In the studio it’s always music. I love radio DJs and listen to Radio Woodstock (WDST) listener-supported radio broadcast from Woodstock, NY; WGXC, Wave Farms’ non-commercial, listener supported station in Catskill, NY; and ElectroMagnetic Radio, a truly progressive, radical, eclectic station and my new favorite. But just music in the studio; talk/news/podcast are good for the car.”
Upcoming shows:
“Chrysalis: Pam Poquette and Lawre Stone,” Tanja Grunert Gallery, 21 Prospect Avenue, Hudson, NY. October 4 – November 9, 2025. Artist Talk on Sunday, October 19, moderated by Clare Gemima.
“Claire Sherwood and Lawre Stone,” The Teaching Gallery at Hudson Valley Community College SUNY, Troy, NY. February 4 – March 7, 2026. Curated by Tara Fracalossi.
About the author: Sharon Butler is a painter and the publisher of Two Coats of Paint. Follow Sharon on Instagram @sharon_butler
