Laurette spent the first years of her life in the open spaces of the Southern Free State. Growing up in Pretoria, she never lost the longing for farm life. After being married in Kenya, she lives on a farm outside of Pretoria with her husband and their two lively daughters.
After completing her studies in Public Relations in 1990, she was employed as Executive Director with a company in the medical field. She was awarded a CHASA-Lennon’s Bronze Award in 1996 for Community Service.
She completed her Diploma in Visual Communication (Cum Laude) with the Open Window Arts Academy in 1997.
In 1997, she established Stone House Studio, a dynamic solo concern specializing in photography and graphic design, dedicated to play its own small part in the betterment of South African organizations and society. Laurette is passionate about striving toward service excellence in the interest of her clients and prides herself on her work ethic.
Competing against 72 other countries, she was awarded an International Graphic Design Award in California for a hand carved leather-bound wooden book designed for the 2001 Mrs. United Nation International competition.
Although her interest in the fashion industry originated on the other side of the lens while doing free-lance ramp modelling, she also lectured part time at Models Inc. on ramp and photographic modelling and is a well-known wedding and function photographer in Gauteng.
She completed a short course with distinction through the Department of Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology at Unisa in 2005 and her painting developed into a serious occupation over the years.
In 2013 she was part of a year long project as photographer/researcher that worked on the Mandela Opus (the most comprehensive book ever about the life of Nelson Mandela).
Since 2016 to date she has been presenting art classes on a weekly basis to Primary School pupils and adult learners.
In June 2014 she became shareholder/director of a filling Station. The business was sold in June 2020 affording her more time to focus full time on her art career.
She works mainly with oil on canvas and beads. Since her first exhibition that was held in 1996 she has participated in a number of group exhibitions with works taken up in private collections as far as New York, Atlanta, Germany and Dubai.
She creates images wanting to re-connect body and spirit, where the canvas becomes a reflective place. She often deals with images where the open spaces of South Africa celebrate the simplicity of farm life, the beauty of people and nature that modern man longs for. Her aim is for the viewer to reflect on and enjoy a “landscape of the mind” in their own home.
INSPIRATION
She loves history and it intrigues her to take a wider view, see the whole landscape and really live it. Believing that we can only connect the dots of our lives by looking backwards, therefore a responsibility lies with every new generation to embrace history and the places we live, to preserve it and keep it alive in order for the dots to connect to a new generations future.
Travel has handed her a magical key - memory and documentation, as well as a sense of peoples worth. A sense or our own dignity grounded in the source of the cosmic dance of everyday living. She explores life as a delicate tracing on the canvas of magic where we all play a part in the unfolding of the history of the moments we share and the world as such.
