Exhibition Statement: Flash of Beauty

In my exploration of beauty, I have come to understand it as more than just an aesthetic—it's a divine intelligence that moves through us, fleeting yet eternal, both dark and light, subtle and profound. Beauty speaks to the soul, not just the eye, and it is this invisible, transcendent force that guides my work. Flash of Beauty is the culmination of a two-year journey into the intersections between form and spirit. The work is inspired by sacred geometry, ancient land sites, and the liminal spaces that might exist between dimensions—spaces that manifest as veils, geometric shapes, bursts of light, winged forms, and translucent colors.

The work takes on a life of its own as I witness the dialogue between the ephemeral and the concrete. In my practice, I seek to capture what is felt but not seen—the subtle realms beyond our rational minds—and the sensations that linger in the space between the mystery of the mystical and the everyday.

Midway through this exploration, I traveled to Egypt, a land rich in mystery and ancient power. It was not the physical monuments or the history that drew me in, but the resonance of the place itself. I felt a deep, ineffable connection. The sacred sites seemed to speak in a language beyond words, an elemental, primal force that left me changed. Upon my return, I began to paint not just the place, but the experience of it—the emotional and metaphysical essence that could not be captured by words.

Many of the works in this exhibition reflect that transformation—an exploration of the flashes of insight and beauty I experienced in the depths of the land called Egypt. It’s as if the paintings themselves emerged as a way of processing that intensity and depth. One question I carried with me during this process was: What are these thin veils that separate us from the infinite?

Ultimately, my work is all about connection—the connection between the visible and the invisible, the profound and the everyday, the individual and the collective. The power of beauty to transcend divisions, to remind us of our shared humanity, and to invite us into a deeper awareness of the world around us. Flash of Beauty is a record of that which is elusive, fleeting, and yet profoundly real.

Lauren Mantecón. 2025

Through painting, I search out, hold space and wait for the in-between places. The relational glimpses of ephemeral frequencies that sometimes imagine their way through me. The process is a desire to touch the ineffable, much like trying to put your arms around the ocean.

Mutating form and color into boundaries and tension points is what informs the process. It’s a search for a visual interlude; a quantum leap living one foot between the physical world and another into dimensional frequencies between here and there.

My influences over three decades of painting professionally has been fragments of dreams, psychic sensibilities, and a desire to bring omnipresent forces of abstract icons into form. My work follows the philosophies of 19th Century Romanticism and The Transcendentalist; specifically, their deep reverence for nature and spirituality supporting practices of self- reflection and personal insight.

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