Lauren Petrick Brooks is a Baltimore-based painter whose work explores intimacy through the overlooked details and subtle textures of daily life. She is drawn to small, everyday moments that often pass unnoticed, the light raking across a cast-iron sewer grate, rainwater pooling in the central cup of a bromeliad plant, the nestling weight of a loved one’s feet. These moments reflect how we relate to places, objects, and one another. By enlarging or isolating these moments, she invites viewers to pause, to notice, and to reflect on the layered complexities of being close. What may seem ordinary holds profound emotional charge.
Brooks builds each painting and drawing in slow, patient layers where process mirrors the time and care intimacy requires. Her works are highly detailed and carefully finished, and she composes and crops them so that what is recognizable shifts as you look. Some subjects give themselves away immediately, while others remain ambiguous, reflecting the way relationships unfold through what is revealed, what is withheld, and what is left unspoken. At its heart, her work is about connection—how we come to know someone, someplace, or something; how those relationships evolve; and how their imprints endure.
Her work has been exhibited nationally, including in What’s New in Still Life at LaiSun Keane, curated by John Yau and featured in Boston Art Review (2023), as well as in a juried exhibition selected by Catherine Murphy. She received third place in the 2023 Miami University Young Painters Competition, juried by Yau. Brooks earned her MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art and her BFA in Studio Art from The University of Texas at Austin.
Alongside her studio practice, Brooks has worked more than fifteen years in arts education and public programming. She designs and leads workshops in museums, libraries, and schools—extending her studio practice into community spaces where art becomes a shared language of connection and reflection.