Laura Radwell is a native New Yorker, frequent traveler, and devoted collector of visual impressions both home (Northampton, Massachusetts) and abroad. Her current work is an example of what might be called ‘visual alchemy.’ It begins with photography: capturing images of various aspects of the landscape, deteriorating surfaces like oxidized metal and chipped paint, and objects of interest (grimy factory windows, walls showing the effects of time, cracked cement, et. al.) Since the photographs are digital, the works are created on a virtual canvas by arranging selected images in relationship to one another (side by side, overlapping, on top, underneath). The blended and sometimes layered images create new impressions of shape and color and abstractions, based on the real world, are born. Habitual perception is challenged in either deciphering the parts or by simply absorbing the new whole.