About Lauren S. Cannon
Lauren Cannon is a Memphis-based multi-media artist known for her playful, thought-provoking work that blends technical expertise with a vibrant sense of storytelling. With a background in painting, graphic design, and art education, she creates across multiple disciplines, including oil painting, encaustic techniques, resin, sculpture, fiber arts, and large-scale collaborative installations. Her work often explores the interplay of color, light, and texture, resulting in compositions that are both dynamic and deeply engaging.
A passionate educator and community advocate, Lauren has dedicated much of her career to arts education. She also leads outreach initiatives such as art kits for the homeless and therapeutic art programs for young girls. Lauren holds multiple degrees, including a BFA in painting from Southern Methodist University, and an MAT in art education and BFA in graphic design from the University of Memphis. She lives in Memphis with her husband and five children.
Joy as resistance: An artist statement
I choose joy – not as a fleeting feeling, but as a radical act of resistance. My work is an exploration of how the things we carry – memories, histories, experiences – filter our realities, shaping the way we see the world and, in turn, how we express it.
I am drawn to light, both its presence and its movement, its ability to reveal and obscure, to transform what we see. My oil paintings capture refractive light the way water does, with layers of resin keeping the color alive in its most vibrant state. My embroidered works strip nature down to its skeletal essence, a minimalist counterpart to my layered paintings. My ceramic and driftwood sculptures echo the organic formations of coral reefs, barnacles, and ocean-tossed treasures.
Layer by layer, I build my pieces the way life builds us, embedding meaning through color, texture, and form. Whether I’m pouring resin, embroidering thread, or shaping ceramic pieces, each medium is a meditation on nature’s rhythms and, similarly, our own.
Through all of it, I seek to honor the weight of what we carry while inviting something new – something hopeful – to emerge within the viewer.
“My work is a reflection of an intricate world, one of complexity and contradiction, of struggle and beauty coexisting. I hope it awakens a new way of seeing, a light that shifts through layers.”
