The Ricco/Maresca Gallery is pleased to present artist, Laura Craig McNellis. Laura grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, with her father, mother and three sisters. She was born in 1957, diagnosed as developmentally disabled and later, autistic. She struggles with communication, using a language only her family may know, but her true, internal world is clearly spoken through her works on paper. For years, Laura drew on misprinted paper deemed unusable by many. Her father, who worked at a post office, would bring home the “printer’s mistake,” paper that was no longer good for use. But for Laura, it was a way to feverishly draw upon her world. Laura currently lives in a productive and imaginative Signature home, in Morganton, North Carolina. Next to her home in Morganton, is Studio XI, a place where she has bolstered up more pass-ion and language into her images than ever before.

The beauty in Laura’s work, her intense and uplifting color, her bold shapes and thick, impressive line flow without any restriction. What Laura may or may not know is that her record of everyday life, such as clothes on hangers, dinner tables full of food and drink, cars, furniture, and ordinary events invite us into admiring the small, but significant beauty and pleasure of our everyday life. She allows these “things” to become intimate and meaningful, showing us almost with joy that these objects are truly what compose us.

Laura Craig McNellis has been with the Ricco/Maresca Gallery since 1992. McNellis’s work has shown at the Annual Outsider Art Fair in NYC since 1993, and has had exhibitions at the Arts Center of Henderson County, Hendersonville, NC, 2002, at The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, “Inside Out: 1970-2003,” in Chicago, IL, 2004 and Laura Craig McNellis: 2001, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC, which included a full-color catalogue, Laura Craig McNellis.