Lauren E. Peters

Lauren E. Peters is a visual artist working with the concept of identity through self-portraiture. She began creating within this genre for a small exhibit in 2016 after an extended hiatus from painting, and two years later won the Emerging Artist Fellowship by the Delaware Division of the Arts. Lauren was the 2023 Delaware Individual Artist Fellow for Visual Arts: Painting, awarded the grant as an Established Fellow. Peters has exhibited on a national level and is also active locally in her home state as a studio artist at The Delaware Contemporary. In the spring of 2024, Peters attended a residency at the Vermont Studio Center supported, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. She was also awarded a month-long residency in the Hudson Valley at ChaShaMa's international program, ChaNorth, in May of 2024. Peters continues to grow as an artist and expand the world in which the portraits exist, and is supported at home by her husband, two cats, and a dog named Rosie.

My practice is an examination of the performance of identity and gender; an exploration of our daily costumes as armor, projection, mirage. Source photos are staged, a conversation with a cell phone and the selfie, then oil paintings to stake a tangible claim in existence. I am seeking a definition of self, however rickety or steadfast it may be, living beyond any binary or box checked definitively on a personality test. Stories or symbolism that hold disparate meanings are welcome companions, embracing the irony of loud prints and colors as human flamboyance against life-saving camouflage in the wild. I am creating an environment where it would be safe to show my colors, to still be a wallflower in clashing patterns and the brightest palette imaginable. The paintings spring from a dialogue with the past and present, internal and external influences, a healthy dose of shared stories and mythology, and the struggle to form a cohesive sense of self. The work is emboldened while I fight the urge to hide, trying not to lose myself completely.

DE