Mokha Laget, "Pinfire," flashe on shaped canvas, 58" x 104" x 1", 2017.
Photo: Courtesy of David Richard Gallery.
Mokha Laget's new work creates illusions of 3D structures floating in space
September 3, 2017 by Emily Van Cleve
Mokha Laget is excited about the direction her work has taken this year and thrilled to be showing her latest shaped paintings at David Richard Gallery in the show “In Shape, In Color,” which opens on September 8.
“My work is about perceptual unreliability,” she explains. “My approach to a painting is initially analytical. It starts with a grid and evolves from there. As I play with line and shape, things change quickly.”
While Laget doesn’t plan out her colors in advance, she does make her own swatches of colors and consider them carefully before applying paint to a shaped canvas.
A resident of New Mexico for more than 20 years, Laget lives in an off-grid house on a mountain top with stunning views that provide constant artistic inspiration. “I love watching the way light and shadows shift throughout the day,” she says. “The desert is a powerful geography for me. It’s an infinite and vast space. New Mexico reminds me of North Africa, where I was born.”
A lifelong artist who was trained in fine arts at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. where she studied with several prominent members of the Washington Color School (WCS), Laget also worked as a professional artist and studio assistant to WCS painter Gene Davis. She’s been involved in the art world as an independent curator, art restorer, arts writer and curatorial assistant.
Laget’s work has been exhibited internationally and is included in a number of collections including the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University and the Museum of Geometric and Madi Art in Dallas, Texas.