SPARTANBURG ART MUSEUM

December 20 - February 18

Laura Spong: Chasing the Undertow

about
LAURA SPONG

Columbia, S.C. artist Laura Spong is one of the state’s most accomplished abstract painters. Like many of the best artists, she is producing some of her strongest work in the latter part of her

career. That career, already well established, has accelerated in the five years since her exhibition, Laura Spong at 80, at Columbia’s Gallery 80808/Vista Studios. Since then, Spong has had multiple solo exhibitions, and major regional institutions such as the South Carolina State Art Collection, the Greenville County Museum of Art and the South Carolina State Museum have purchased her work. 1

Spong studied painting from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, and won Columbia Artists’ Guild exhibitions in 1957 and 1961, gaining serious recognition as a beginning artist. However, it was not until much later, sometime in her fifties and sixties, that she began to paint seriously. From the late 1940s, when she took a few art courses as an English major at Vanderbilt University, until the late 1980s, Spong’s art production came in fits and starts. She lived her life primarily as a housewife and mother to six children, and was unable to sustain a consistent career as an artist.

About her long journey as an artist, Spong says “The three main forces in my life were my family, taking care of them, later in my life my love for art, and all my life the search for God or a spiritual force, artistic energy.” In 1973, Spong’s husband Ernest passed away, and more than a decade passed before Spong was finally able to structure her life around making art. “It took me years to say ‘Laura Spong’ instead of Mrs. Ernest Spong, Jr.,” she recalls, “I don’t have another identity now but being an artist, except perhaps being a grandmother.”

Some thirty five years after her first successful but brief burst onto the Columbia art scene as a novice among some of the area’s most legendary artists, Spong’s halting career came to bloom among artists many decades younger than her. “I think that as I have grown older and have been willing to share more with people, I have felt more connected,” she says. “I am not so worried anymore about what people think about what I think. Now I am older and I want to have a voice.” 2

1 Gilkerson, Mary Bentz. "LAURA SPONG'S COMPOSITIONAL DANCE.” Laura Spong. 29 Jan. 2005. Web. <http://lauraspong.blogspot.com/2011/01/laura-spongs-compositional-dance-by.html>.

2 Roefs, Wim. “Essay: : The Making of An Artist.” Laura Spong. 2006. Web. <http://lauraspong.blogspot.com/2008/07/essay-laura-spong-making-of-artist.html>.

DEVELOPMENT OF A VISION

Early on, Spong’s work exhibited considerable sophistication. Some of these paintings indicate that she walked the line between abstraction and representation with relative ease, not that she ever went through a truly representational phase.1 Her distinct style was first informed by the New York abstract expressionists during the 1950s, and she was deeply influenced by a mid-fifties show of modern art at the Columbia Museum. 2

In these early years, Spong’s paintings won awards and were placed in shows. Personal circumstances prevented her from painting and exhibiting with any frequency in the next quarter century, but the few remaining works from her early oeuvre show the promise she would fulfill decades later. While these early paintings displayed a more formalist approach to composition and color, as did many abstracts of the time, Spong’s later work is freer and more colorful, while retaining a strong sense of composition and a provocative palette. “I have been inspired and energized,” says Spong. “I think the work is freer. It has a sense of letting loose, of just painting and not obsessing about every little line and dot.”

The work has changed some, without losing any of the Spong imprint. While maintaining the lyrical quality of her work and the fluid lines, Spong’s paintings have become more aggressive and daring. The breaks in the planes are sharper, the marks at times more forceful, and the scribbles more abundant and perhaps livelier. More often than before, Spong has explored an earthier, even dark pallet. But, she says, sometimes they indicate her disposition. “I am not depressed, but I do feel pessimistic about the situation in the world. Still, at times I feel great hope, too. My hope comes from my faith, but when I am not in that mode, I go dark. I get into fears of the future, of losing my independence and my health, and fear about the people I love.”

Above all, these developments suggest an increased confidence as Spong further expands her range. “I think the paintings are more interesting,” Spong says. “I think I am getting more layers and more depth. My biggest fear has been that I would just paint a pretty piece of cloth.” 3

1 Roefs, Wim. “Essay: The Early Works.” Laura Spong. Aug. 2007. Web. <http://lauraspong.blogspot.com/2008/12/essay-laura-spong-early-works.html>.

2 Roefs, Wim. “Essay: : The Making of An Artist.” Laura Spong. 2006. Web. <http://lauraspong.blogspot.com/2008/07/essay-laura-spong-making-of-artist.html>.

3 Roefs, Wim. “LAURA SPONG 2006 – 2011: Age As An Administrative Device.” Laura Spong. 29 Jan. 2005. Web. <http://lauraspong.blogspot.com/2005/01/wim-roefs-laura-spong-2006-2011-age-as.html>.

about
SPONG’S EARLY WORKS

While European cities recovered from the devastation of World War II in the 1940s, major art movements began to originate in New York, where artists had the freedom and energy to follow avant-garde ideas away from Europe. It was during this time that Laura Spong began painting, and the proximity of New York Abstract Expressionism is evident in her early work, which was often monochromatic and illustrated the contemporary idea that a painting should appear flat, with an emphasis on value and composition rather than subject matter. 1

Spong’s art reflected her introspective and reflective nature from the very beginning. As an English major at Vanderbilt, she recalls seeing images of Van Gogh’s and Gauguin’s work. In the early 1950s, a modern art exhibition at the Columbia Museum changed her life, she says. “It certainly seemed like the kind of work I wanted to do, and it came from all over the country. It was the most exciting thing I had ever seen.” Most of what she knew about modern art, though, including Abstract Expressionism, was by osmosis, and it wasn’t much. But she knew she had no interest in making representational art or communicating the literal. “I have always painted abstract. I have four flower paintings. But then, perhaps the way I paint was my way of staying hidden, of not letting people know what I was thinking.” 2

1 Amy Chalmers
2 Roefs, Wim. “Essay : The Making of An Artist.” Laura Spong. 2006. Web. <http://lauraspong.blogspot.com/2008/07/essay-laura-spong-making-of-artist.html>.

about
SPONG’S NEW WORKS

In 2006, Laura Spong had four solo exhibitions. They included a retrospective at the University of South Carolina and a wildly successful 80th-birthday exhibition. With the commercial success of these exhibitions came critical acclaim. The South Carolina State Art Collection acquired two of Spong’s paintings, and this year she was in a group show at the Greenville (S.C.) County Museum of Art.

The acclaim has liberated Spong. Since her highly successful 80th birthday exhibition in February 2006, Laura Spong’s career has taken off. She had a significant presence in the Columbia, S.C., art scene before but is now easily one of the city’s most respected and popular artists.1

Spong is now admired not just for her personality and high energy at an older age but for her impressive non-objective works of art. Spong has developed an arsenal of marks, shapes, forms and scribbles that are an integral part of her visual language. Spong’s mature compositions increasingly combined the large field and broad swath with square-inch action; faint lines, light or dark, with fat ones; or vertical shapes and movement with horizontal ones. Meanwhile, she organizes all this activity in beautifully integrated compositions, and, as her 2006 exhibition showed abundantly, in any conceivable palette.

“I have been inspired and energized,” Spong said in early 2007. “I think the work is freer. It has a sense of letting loose, of just painting and not obsessing about every little line and dot.” 1 Her sense of urgency only has increased in the past few years, Spong says. She wants to get to her studio all the time, has a desire to paint all the time. “Maybe it’s because I sense my time is running out. Obviously, it is. I have to be realistic about my age. So I want to cram everything I can in there.”2

1 Roefs, Wim. “Essay : Abstract in Nature.” Laura Spong. 1 Feb. 2007. Web. <http://lauraspong.blogspot.com/2007/01/essay-laura-spong-abstract-in-nature.html>.

2 Roefs, Wim. “LAURA SPONG 2006 – 2011: Age As An Administrative Device.” Laura Spong. 29 Jan. 2005. Web. <http://lauraspong.blogspot.com/2005/01/wim-roefs-laura-spong-2006-2011-age-as.html>.