Her Studio

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.

Substrates

Every piece begins with the surface, the foundation that determines how light moves, how pigment settles, and how texture holds. Laura gravitates toward archival substrates because they honor the integrity of the work and the people who will live with it.

Heavyweight canvas, linen, and burlap allow her gradients and gestural textures to take shape with structure and presence. Custom panels provide a rigid foundation for larger-scale compositions. For her drawings, she turns to museum-grade cotton rag paper, chosen for its durability and its ability to capture even the quietest marks.

The substrates chosen are the backbone of the work, designed to endure both time and touch.

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.