Janay Laufer

Artist Statement

Painting is a tool, a way to preserve a feeling, a documentation of a reality that once was, a fleeting moment suspended in time. The expanses surrounding each momentary experience inspire me to express them visually: a documentation of quiet, ethereal moments that often go unnoticed.

In my practice, I create spaces rather than stories, allowing motifs to exist without a fixed narrative. The paintings distill mood, presence, and atmosphere, offering the viewer a field to inhabit and reflect upon.

Underlying all of this is my belief in painting as something eternal—a medium capable of holding memory, nostalgia, and traces of days gone by. Each painting becomes an instrument for reproducing the world that surrounds me through the means of the world within me.

Biography

My work is rooted in the visual language of Southern California, shaped by the energy of skate culture, surf graphics, street style, and the animated worlds I grew up with in the 1990s. These influences appear through bold color, exaggerated forms, graphic linework, and playful compositions that move between nostalgia, humor, and personal mythology.

Working primarily with ink pen, acrylic paint, and oil pastel, I create illustrative works that combine loose, instinctive mark-making with characters, symbols, and surreal visual fragments. My process often begins with drawing, allowing images to develop through repetition, movement, and the collision of familiar cultural references with my own internal world.

I am interested in how popular imagery becomes part of memory. Cartoons, board graphics, logos, and street visuals all carry a certain emotional charge, especially when filtered through childhood and place. In my work, these references are not used as direct copies, but as a starting point for building a personal visual language that feels energetic, strange, and distinctly my own