Born in Morocco in 1964 to Belgian parents, Laurent developed an interest in illustration and painting during high school. Laurent then followed a corporate careen in marketing whilst continuing to indulge her artistic passions until 1999, when she left Belgium to continue her education as an illustrator in New Zealand. She developed a following as a cartoonist through regular contributions to international newspapers including Western Australia’s The Sunday Times. She gave up cartooning in 2012 to pursue her career as a painter in Mauritius, then the USA, and eventually returning to Australia in 2014, settling in Melbourne where she launched LAURENT Gallery and Studio.
Her early mastery of drawing and cartooning, along with her 6 year apprenticeship with Chinese conceptual art teacher (Gao Xuyong), attuned her to the abstract essence of line. Working in mixed media, Laurent’s style developed from figurative works to black and white abstract and calligraphic compositions, where forms have morphed into rapid, dramatic brushstrokes.
Laurent has been deeply inspired by the ambiance of New York and the influence of masters like Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Pierre Soulage, etc. Her growing animosity towards the absurdity of bureaucratic rules, stale institutions and patriarchal dogmatism has led her to face what Carl Jung called the Animus of her psyche, giving birth to her bold and powerful collection: “Black Is”.
2019, a season of breakthroughs for Laurent, marked the beginning of the “Bleu” collection, featuring the incorporation of over saturated blue geometrical shapes. The new vibrant blue expresses her revelation of the necessity of harnessing the omnipresent and omnipotent power of the divine in all our creative activities.
In 2020, with the onset of COVID restrictions, Laurent’s exhibition and gallery activites were abruptly curtailed. Out if the silence, the solitude and the darkness, she re-emerged like a lotus out of the mud with her new sculptures, Anima, a collection of biomorphic abstract plaster compositions, expressing the human primordial drive for love and connection.