Nancy Staub Laughlin is an American pastel artist and photographer who works at the edge where two mediums meet—the sharp lens of the camera and the softness of pastel. She earned her BFA at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia and has shown her work across museums and galleries on the east coast. Her art has been featured in articles, interviews, and sits in both private and corporate collections. The late Sam Hunter, art historian and critic, once described her vision as “refreshingly unique,” a phrase that captures her practice well. Laughlin turns images of the natural world—flowers, skies, horizons—into layered spaces that live between reality and invention. Her compositions are not simple recordings of nature but reflections on how we see, how memory lingers, and how beauty exists in both permanence and passing moments.
The Luminescence of Light
“The Luminescence of Light” unfolds in quiet restraint. A sky of muted pastel tones shifts with soft unrest, clouds drifting in delicate turbulence. Beneath, the water reflects the sky, blurring surface and depth into one continuous field.
Against this painted expanse, three square photographs are placed side by side. Each panel shows a single white flower, crisp and precise, suspended in a gray void. They interrupt the painted surface but also belong to it. Below them, pastel-drawn blossoms float across the water, faint and ephemeral, as if pulled from memory rather than observed in the present.
The exchange between the layers drives the work. The photographed flowers carry clarity and weight, while the drawn blossoms fade, almost spectral. The viewer is asked: what is remembered, and what is real?
The piece has the rhythm of a staged performance. The painted sky and water hold the mood. The photographed blooms step forward as actors, vivid and deliberate. The sketched blossoms trail behind like shadows, echoes of what once was.
Choosing white flowers is deliberate. Stripped of color, their form depends on light and shadow alone. They glow in stillness, reminding us that radiance does not require color. This work is not only about flowers but about states of transition—light shifting, memory softening, the line between presence and absence dissolving.
The Radiance of the Illumination
If “Luminescence” speaks in whispers, “The Radiance of the Illumination” feels expansive. Its palette shifts to cool, crystalline blues. The painted water stretches outward with calm certainty, carrying a sense of infinity. Star-shaped blossoms float across the surface, touched with violet and pale blue, steady and embedded rather than ghostlike.
A large rectangular photograph anchors the composition. Three flowers in grayscale, each bold and detailed, rise with quiet force. The central bloom dominates with structure so defined it feels architectural. Against the soft painted sea, these flowers stand firm, unshakable.
The dialogue here is more direct. The photographed flowers press forward, undeniable, while the pastel blossoms drift outward, lighter but steady. The viewer’s gaze moves between mediums, unsettled but engaged—between sharpness and softness, the fixed and the fluid.
Its radiance lies not in color but in the meeting of two languages. The pastel world suggests dream and distance. The photographed flowers assert presence, anchoring reality. The tension between them creates an ongoing oscillation.
Compared with “Luminescence,” this piece leans toward endurance. The flowers feel like markers of permanence, though the surrounding sea and sky remind us that permanence itself is an illusion.
Closing Reflections
Nancy Staub Laughlin’s work thrives in contrast. Photography meets pastel, clarity meets haze, permanence meets impermanence. In both “The Luminescence of Light” and “The Radiance of the Illumination,” natural forms become more than motifs. Flowers, skies, and waters speak as symbols of time, perception, and memory.
Her art resists simple labels. It is part dream, part still life, part landscape. It is not meant to resolve quickly but to hold the viewer in tension—between what is fleeting and what endures. In her hands, light itself becomes a subject, always shifting, always reminding us that to see is to witness change.
