Laila Cola Weeks used to fill Albuquerque with her wonderful art shows. Now she lives in Berlin.

Here she is painting.

Here is what her paintings look like these days. They’re large and they’re oil.

The Disintegration of Oppositeness. 

Pictures of Laila remind me of stills from a Fellini film.

It’s like, which one’s the main work of art? I think if Laila is the art, we can say the painting is comparatively jarring like the police knocking down your door.

She started the series pictured here three years ago. I think they began as simple shapes in rows and columns and grew to include more complex relationships in space and greater detail, or maybe it was the other way around.

It’s a genuine pleasure to look closely at her large geometric paintings of cellular shapes and solid blocks floating in front of a vignetted abyss and see how she takes the patterns and makes slight, clever tweaks to each individual unit so they all have their own unique mutations. These works physically draw you in like they’re eye magnets, and then they become heart and brain magnets. Her use of science and math in painting is graceful. Let’s look at some of her work!

The Thin Film.

The Faint Feeling.

Self-Portrait as the Eye of a Middle-Aged Man.

Untitled.

The Difference Between Us.

The Prickling Sensation.

The Edge of a Feather.

Untitled.

Tricky Little Ghost.

Pyragraph: Are you still doing those geometry paintings? I don’t understand why they weren’t splattered across some big art magazine.

Laila: Well I’m doing something that’s a hybrid of two series: geometry and organic things, especially kind of yucky or uglyish yet pretty organic things. Kind of opposite-ish things hanging out together, harmoniously. Reconciling their differences.

And I think the reason that they weren’t in any magazines before is because I’m lazy. I never really try to go for that stuff. I guess I should. But I’m kind of shy.

Pyragraph: Well, I’m glad you think it’s just ’cause you’re lazy.

Laila: Yeah. I think the magazine thing and galleries and stuff is for those who have the time and patience to achieve it. Doesn’t mean that those people are good OR bad at what they paint/whatever they do.

Photos by Julien Barrat and Sean Alkire.