Laura De Coninck

With the book ‘Saudade’, Laura makes a call to the ambassadors of the word. She hopes to ‘contaminate’ as many people as possible with her love for this word, so it might become shared and commonplace. When she heard the word and the meaning sinked in after repetition, she experienced a kind of homecoming. It was as if everything fell into place; her oeuvre and that which pushed her to paint suddenly had a common denominator, a flag that covered the load. And she discovered something else: what she tries to express in images is just as indefinable as that which her father tried to express in his poetry. Laura started making this bundle by writing down her feelings. The atmosphere of which she translated into images. In an attempt to communicate about reality in a softer way than words can. Words often are not enough, they are more harmful than they are intended to be and are often misinterpreted. To express her reality Laura prefers reaching for imagery. It is a gentle way to speak about that which is almost inexpressible. A conversation without words about Saudade and the power and the fragility of love. “The emotional worlds that her father could evoke in his unique manner, by using the right words, Laura evokes with the same authenticity by using an modest, interplay of lines, images, ink and paper. I like reading her.” — Jan Moeyaert, organisator Kunstenfestival Watou.