Chaparral Fine Art - Featured Artists

Laura B. Palmer

Laura Blue Palmer was born and raised in Roanoke, Virginia. Laura's grandfather, Allen Ingalls Palmer, was a well-known painter in the Roanoke Valley, and though she never knew him she was surrounded and influenced by his watercolors and adopted painting as her outlet at an early age. During high school, she attended the Savannah College of Art and Design's "Rising Star" program where she first experienced artistic independence, and began to seriously pursue a career in art.

Laura moved to Montana in 1994, and studied fine art at the University of Montana in Missoula for two years. She completed her formal art education at the San Francisco Art Institute, earning a BFA in 1999. City life was exciting, but the lure of Montana was too strong, and Laura returned to the Big Sky state in 2000. Today, she makes her home in Bozeman.

Laura has a true passion for the wild spaces of the west, and explores her experience of nature in evocative abstract landscaps. "I love to work with color and light in representing the moods and places I have seen in the wilderness." She has backpacked extensively in Montana, Wyoming and Alaska, and draws on these locations to create her oils. "My work is as much about memory as it is about place. I look upon my paintings as a map of my life, which I am constantly creating."