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I believe that everyone is born with some form of creativity but some are born with an abundance of it and, from life's beginning to end, that creativity must be expressed in one way or another.
I was always drawing and painting through my childhood as well as taking music lessons.
We had no art classes in High School in my small town. When the Principal of our school called me into his office at the end of grade 13 and asked me what I planned to do with my future, my first choice was to study architecture, which proved to be impossible because of low math marks and no portfolio.
My second choice was to become an opera singer, a possibly achievable goal. I went on to study vocal performance in University and at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto.
Visual arts took a back seat through the first part of my adult life, though never totally.
I am one of those people for whom life stops in one moment and only a new life, a very different life, is possible in the future.
In my last 30s I was teaching and running a small interior design business.
One sunny summer afternoon all of that and much more came to an end when I ran head on into another car.
A year later, after I was home from hospital and working to recover, two things happened: the first was that I found the world around me unbelievably beautiful. I had missed so much in my busy former life. The other was an urge, a necessity, to recreate my new life in some meaningful way. I turned to an old love. I turned to painting, to watercolours.
First I had to develop technical skills I lacked, but soon I was exhibiting my work and within 4 years had my first show at the Kaspar Gallery in the Yorkville area of Toronto.
I continue, over the 36 years since then to try through painting to express that joy for the beauty I saw and felt back then and continue to see and feel today. That is what inspires me to create.
Update: Laura Carter is not a current member of the Studio Tour, please visit her website to contact her directly.
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