STUDIO

THE

In Laura Clay’s studio, nothing is chosen by accident. Her practice is shaped by the belief that materials are not just technical choices, but vessels of history, identity, and meaning. The studio is where those elements meet. Where raw linen becomes a landscape for exploring duality, where architectural pens echo a lineage of makers before her, and where pigments born from the earth carry forward cultural memory.

This is a closer look at the tools and materials that shape the work, and the stories embedded within them.

My work is rooted in movement, between cultures, between structure and fluidity, between past and present. Growing up between Mexico and the United States, I experienced firsthand the complexities of bicultural identity, the way it constantly shifts and adapts.

Through painting and drawing, I explore this sense of duality and transformation, using abstraction to capture the tension between chaos and order, belonging and displacement.

NOTE FROM

The Studio

In my studio, the architecture of a piece begins long before a mark is ever made.

I have always believed that the soul of an artwork resides in the integrity of its materials. The surface, the pigment, the tools in hand. These choices shape the work just as much as the gesture of paint itself. For that reason, I have never been drawn to the standardized or the disposable. Instead, I am constantly searching for materials that carry history within them.

My studio moves between Austin, Texas and Valenciana, Guanajuato, and over the years I have built a library of substrates and tools sourced from historic mills, tanneries, and apothecaries around the world. Some come from Brooklyn, others from Venice, others from Sydney. Each carries a lineage of craftsmanship that becomes part of the work before the first line is drawn.

This commitment to archival quality is not simply about durability. It is about intention. When a piece leaves the studio, I want it to exist as more than an image. It should be a physical object of permanence, something built to endure alongside the memories it will eventually hold in the spaces it inhabits.

To me, that is where the real life of the artwork begins.

Laura Clay

FOUNDATIONS

Every artwork begins with an active dialogue between the brush and the surface. Rather than utilizing standard or passive backdrops, the studio treats the surface as an essential collaborator in the structural narrative of the piece. The following historical, hand-processed foundations are carefully selected from across the globe to bring distinct weight, texture, and permanence to each collection

The Substrates

Genuine Pergamena Parchment

The studio’s most precious substrate. Prepared by hand in the Hudson Valley using traditional medieval methods, this living parchment subtly moves and breathes, guiding the flow of each graphite mark. It is reserved for our most intimate, premium drawings.
St. Armand Handmade Papers

Handmade in Montreal from cotton rag, these papers are essential to our drawing practice.
Their fibrous, deckled edges and organic tooth grab the charcoal, creating velvety shadows that anchor our figure studies in a sense of timelessness.
Herringbone Linen

Sourced for its structural elegance, this heavy-duty linen (480 gsm) features a distinct herringbone weave pattern historically used in 19th-century industrial textiles. It offers a sophisticated, rhythmic surface that subtly interacts with the paint, adding a layer of historical weight to our oil paintings.
Jute

This raw, heavy fiber creates a rugged, sculptural surface where brush, paint, and weave meet in a more physical dialogue. Unlike standard canvas, jute possesses a rugged, unforgiving tooth that demands a physical negotiation between the brush and the weave.

Architecture Pens

Linework is a form of inheritance. Laura uses professional-grade architecture pens, a direct nod to her mother’s career as an architect and the precision that shaped the world she grew up in.

These pens offer the control, consistency, and archival quality needed for the detailed geometry, stippling, and fine linear structures in her drawings. Their precision lets her explore the tension between order and looseness, a balance that anchors much of her visual language.

Through these tools, technical drawing becomes something quieter and more intimate: a mapping of lineage.

Cochineal

Some materials come with their own stories. Cochineal, the deep red pigment made from insects living on nopal cacti in Mexico, is one of them.

Laura often harvests cochineal from her studio in Guanajanto, and prepares cochineal herself, grinding and mixing it with her own hands. This process connects her to generations of Indigenous makers who used the pigment long before it entered global trade routes or modern art studios.

In her paintings, cochineal becomes both color and symbol. It speaks to heritage, craftsmanship, and the reclamation of traditional methods through a contemporary lens.

Layered into gradients or dense textures, the pigment adds depth that is both visual and cultural.