Artist: Lauren Walke
Title:
Sanctification and Oh God, Hear the Words of My Mouth
Medium: Watercolor and gouache
Unframed Dimensions: 8 x 10 inches (diptych, each)
Framed Dimensions: 12 x 15 Inches (diptych, each)
Price: $2,800
Artist Statement: This diptych, Sanctification and Oh God, Hear the Words of My Mouth, marks a closing gesture within my body of work grappling with religion, memory, and inherited belief. Created through a process of return and revision, these self-portraits evolved into ritualistic, repetitive, and devotional acts. Borrowing from the visual language of liturgy, they hold reverence and resistance in equal measure. Through self-portraiture, I use the body as a site of internal processing. The works reflect the experience of sifting through inherited beliefs, returning to familiar language and imagery, and considering what can be carried forward, reclaimed, or remade. Rather than resolving these questions, the diptych allows faith, doubt, grief, devotion, and personal autonomy to remain in tension. Sanctification draws on imagery of purification, calling, rebirth, and renewal. Oh God, Hear the Words of My Mouth returns to the language of Mormon temple ritual and prayer. In both works, familiar forms are placed within a more personal visual language, creating space for meanings that are not fixed or singular. Together, these works function as bookends, closing a chapter of religious inquiry shaped by my upbringing, my body, and my relationship to systems of belief. In this way, the diptych engages themes that have long appeared in Dialogue, including embodied spirituality, Mormon feminism, doubt, devotion, and the negotiation between inherited belief and personal autonomy. The works remain rooted in Mormon experience while making space for questioning, reinterpretation, and a spirituality that is self-defined.
Artist Bio: Lauren Walke is a visual artist and illustrator based in Rocky Mount, Virginia. Working primarily in mixed media, she creates layered, symbolic imagery informed by Appalachian landscapes, folklore, myth, and religious iconography. Her work explores ritual, memory, and the relationships between people, belief, and the natural world. Walke holds a BFA in Two-Dimensional Studies from Weber State University. Over the past decade, she has worked as a freelance illustrator, art director, and educator. These experiences inform her approach to storytelling, composition, and visual narrative.
