Available for commissions, student and adult lessons, murals and special projects. Current delivery time for new commissions is late December 2018.
Work featured on this site is only a sample. To date, I’ve painted over 200 works, increasingly about the sport I love. Many prints and smaller works and studies are available on my etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/Riekki
I was born in Ventura, California and lived in Oklahoma and Oregon before calling Florida home. I earned studio art and anthropology degrees at Rollins College, and after graduating, my first job as an artist was painting large murals from iconic Hollywood films on top of unsteady scaffolding in the middle of the night after the theater closed. Later, I taught art to private and public school students.
My work has been described as surreal, impressionistic, abstract. My abstract work is influenced by the places I’ve lived, especially the bright colors, textures and beauty out of those natural environments.
Rowing is a subject that lends itself to painting, and I’ve been blessed to be able to coach it and share the sport as a coach since 2003, most of those years spent at the Orlando Rowing Club. Very few people can see a shell go by without admiring the fluid motion of the boat and sense of peace and power in its speed, or the drama in early sunrises when practice takes place. Practices can be grueling or as meditative as they look from shore – or both. I enjoy trying to capture all of it, especially the serenity, the contrasts of the sport, and the surreal aspects of a before-dawn practice when all kinds of people come together to drive themselves stupidly hard with no one cheering.
Laura Riekki
RiekkiART@gmail.com
(407) 342-5353