“Death used to really scare me,” Alicia Zanoni Lawrence tells me from her Harrison Center studio, surrounded by freshly cut wooden frames and paintings still wet with oil. “I used to think– what if I pass unexpectedly, and I leave the inside of my car a mess?” She laughs, “it all seemed so embarrassing.” A year has come and gone, and I still think of this conversation, in which she described to me a period of her life when she imagined even her funeral with anxiety. Would it be confusing to the attendees? What if they each described having known a different person? Her own identity and values were going through such drastic shifts. How would she be remembered?

*Swallows in the Morning*
watercolor on paper
11 x 14", framed 17 x 21"

Zanoni Lawrence has not forgotten these moments of concern and confusion over her own fate. In 2023, her new body of work, titled Infinite Lineage, reflects on her past and present epiphanies about the cycles of life, interconnectedness, renewal, and yes, death. All of these concepts are handled in her primary muse, the main subject of her artistic practice: the landscape.

*The Cycle of Life (the Loss of the Fear of Death)*
Watercolor on paper
15.5” x 24”

Zanoni Lawrenece’s body of work is full of sprawling, magically rendered settings that take moments from her travels across the states and turn them into majestic imagery. Landscapes, after all, are a lot like stages– huge stages where the theater of life plays again and again, but the curtain is never pulled. This show sees Zanoni Lawrence painting multiple acts at once– from the deer and its new fawn in the meadow, to the corpse buried underneath the loam of a tree, to living, breathing figures implemented into the landscape. Layered in Infinite Lineage is a sense of the passage of time. She intentionally leaves artifacts wherever she can that invite the viewer to dig deeper and discover that the world is full of yesterday, and the day before, and countless days into the past.

*Generations*
tea, teabags, watercolor on paper
36 x 36"

*Doe and Fawn Resting*
watercolor on paper
8 x 10", framed 12 x 15"

Zanoni Lawrence’s choice of watercolor for Infinite Lineage is a break from tradition for her. Watercolor is unique in its transparency and allows the viewer to see the texture and grit of the paper beneath it. Watercolor is also far less forgiving than oil. Marks made on paper have a finality to them– but herein is part of the appeal. Zanoni Lawrence has a history of using oils and layering painstakingly, and she brings this tradition to her watercolors. In one of the instructional videos she shares via Instagram, she theorizes that no matter how deeply a hue is concealed under layers of paint, it still has a way of shining through–of making a difference in the final piece–regardless of whether the viewer is conscious of it.

*First Signs*
watercolor on paper
11 x 14"

Zanoni Lawrence encourages you to look carefully at the constant playing out of life. Any single place aches with the repetition of life upon it– the generations before still etched into the dirt. Through all of this, Infinite Lineage whispers of something else– new life. She and her husband Joshua are expecting their first child this Spring, and she cites this as a great influence for this body of work. In the wake of such a shift in her personal life, she indulges her sympathies in pieces like Grizzly Bear Keeping up with Her Cubs in Glacier, which, she admits, has a “nursery” quality. The show is, among many things, a self-portrait of the inner workings of a soon-to-be mother.

*Grizzly Bear Keeping up with Her Cubs in Glacier*
watercolor on paper
8 x 10", framed 12 x 15"

Infinite Lineage shares Zanoni Lawrence’s love for motherhood, for matriarchy, and for all of the primal instincts that arise from under the surface of oneself during times of great change. It is an artist’s privilege to provide a testament to the human experience– and experiences like motherhood are brimming with everything from quiet worries to total exhilaration. Countless people go through these things and do so privately, but Alicia Zanoni Lawrence speaks boldly through her work. She shares her excitement for her own life and for the concept of life itself. The landscapes she depicts may or may not exist, but their existence is irrelevant– they are dream spaces where we consider our relationship to the earth, to time, and to the magic of death and birth.

*Beginning*
watercolor on paper
11 x 14", framed 17 x 21"

See Infinite Lineage in the Harrison Gallery through the month of March, and browse more of these pieces on our online gallery.