Laurence Kaufman Gallery

Laurence Kaufman devoted his artistic career to realizing the body's significance, the spaces and curves formed through it's movement. Kaufman takes the solid element of wood and imbues it with energy and life, in three dimensional figures suggestive of the body's fluid rhythms.  His sculpture is strongly rooted in ancient and primitive art.  From the study of art from these early periods, he assimilated a vocabulary of forms and spatial compositions to create uniquely powerful compositions with emotional impact.  

Laurence Kaufman's pencil-drawn portraits are engrossing in their details. His character studies capture every crease, every wrinkle, shadow and strand of hair.  Kaufman can transmit traces of fear, uncertainty and resignation in the eyes of his figures.  We meet their stare and stand transfixed. They feel instantly familiar. We share their emotions, their vulnerability, their humanity. 

Larry Kaufman's black and white images are an extension of his studies of the body and human form.  His lens captures the graceful yet sinewy form and movement of tree trunks and branches. These trees are the embodiment of a life force both earthly and otherworldly. As with Kaufman's sculptures, although these "bodies" are made of wood, they appear to in motion, reaching up and out in all directions twisting, turning and dancing in discovery and, perhaps a celebration, of life.