Laurie Weller, who has served as a visiting member of the Austin College art faculty during various terms, studied painting at the University of Illinois and painting and printmaking at Tyler School of Art at Temple University. She moved to Texas in 1980 and has taught at Southwest Texas State University, Texas A&M at Corpus Christi, and Austin College. Since 1998, she has served as an adjunct professor of art and graduate faculty at Texas Woman’s University. Artist residencies at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and Atlantic Center for the Visual Arts were pivotal experiences. Weller lives with her artist husband, two children, a dog, and two cats in a home/studio in the woods outside Denton.  

Weller, first known for her contemporary work in watercolor, now paints primarily in acrylic on wood. Her paintings have been exhibited regionally as well as nationally and are included in corporate and private collections. Past exhibitions include "Watercolor USA 86: The Monumental Image" at Springfield Art Museum in Springfield, Missouri; "Private Treasures: Public View" at the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas; and "New Works 1984" at Laguna Gloria Art Museum in Austin, Texas, along with numerous solo exhibitions in private and university galleries. Her work recently was included in the “Couples who Create” exhibition at the Visual Art Center in Denton, Texas.   

In her statement for the Austin College exhibit, Weller wrote of her art, “I find myself inspired both by the ephemeral, as in music and dance, as well as natural form. Stratigraphic color and transparency have been important elements in my work for decades, though I find new ways to explore these ideas. In “Overlay 2” there is a convergence of the curvilinear imagery from my “Sinfonia” series and my early, recurring interest in mark making and layering information. A sense of space and the passage of time is indicated by the way that spaces in the overlapping layers expose the history of the layers beneath.  

“I think of them as complex visual puzzles, and challenge myself to create an engaging environment, starting with a skeletal structure and no preconceived idea of the direction the images will take,” Weller continued. “As the paintings develop, shapes will emerge and disappear; new forms will be created. I create boundaries with color and shape, then cross them; define concrete forms that dissolve into atmosphere. I apply paint with brushes, sponges, my hands, and trowels, paint through hardware cloth to create tone, and scratch off layers of paint with sandpaper, sponges, and a scribe. They evolve through this very physical, raw and immediate process, into something often quite different from the initial compositions.” 

Austin College is a leading national independent liberal arts college located north of Dallas in Sherman, Texas. Founded in 1849, making it the oldest institution of higher education in Texas operating under original charter and name, the college is related by covenant to the Presbyterian Church (USA). Recognized nationally for academic excellence in the areas of international education, pre-professional training, and leadership studies, Austin College is one of 40 schools profiled in Loren Pope’s influential book Colleges that Change Lives.