We hook up with Laura at her studio on lower Queen Anne. I am so jealous because the studio is a dream. There is paint on the walls and paint on the floor. The entire studio is covered with paintings the kitchen is a mish-mash of her tools of the trade. The bathroom stores canvas and large shapes loom in the once functional tub. We wander around looking at her art and finally settle right smack dab on top of the area most dear to her, the place where she paints. Drinking cups of white wine, eating luscious chocolates made by her friend Leslie, window uncovered to reveal the Space Needle shimmering outside, we chat about art.

EB: I know a little bit about you but I do know that you have an accent.
LC: I do? What kind of accent?
EB: A non-Seattle accent.
LC: I don’t have a New York accent ’cause I used to talk like I was from Long Island. (She gives me an example). I moved to Miami when I was fifteen and I was mocked a lot but the kids there had their own accent, that Cuban-Latino thing (she gives me another good rendition).
EB: Did Miami have a big influence on you?
LC: Yes. I didn’t want to move there, but my mom really wanted to because of my grandparents, about them being with other Cuban people.
EB: So Cuba, have you been there yet?
LC: No, I am first generation Cuban. My parents left Cuba in the early sixties, now my mom lives in Ballard and my father is still on Long Island.
EB: I saw the interview of you on Channel 22 you talked about why you started painting.


LC: I was thinking about the very first painting I did and I think it was a Jesus paint-by-numbers on velvet my mother bought me for Christmas when I was eleven. I started loving the smell of paint right away; but it was in college when I really started making
my own work. I went to Florida
International University where I got my BFA.
EB: So you were painting, and you moved out here. When did you develop your style that you have now?
LC:That happened about three years ago. I don’t even know what happened to me. I was making very big kind of abstract paintings using a lot of materials. I just stopped doing that and then this Bummerbunny painting and these characters started coming out, and that’s where I am now.
EB: One of the things I am interested in is what makes change in people. Sometimes there is no specific moment.
LC: I do think that would be about me getting older and just seeing changes happen physically with me but who knows.
EB: Bummerbunny was the first character that came out.
LC: I made him on roofing paper, ’cause I was working on a big abstract painting, like eight feet by eight feet, and I just felt like that was done so, instead of going with another canvas I changed it up and using a material I could just throw away. So a bunny came out, and a cat came out, but the bunny didn’t want the cat to live so the bunny killed the cat. (We crack up at the thought.)
EB: Were you surprised when that happened?
LC: I thought it was a bad, bad painting but I was lucky cause I have two friends, actually my ex-husband, Juan Carlos, who is a painter, and my friend Ritchie who was a professor from the University of Washington for many years. They both have these unbelievable eyes, and they just understand without even saying too many words, they encouraged me. I am very grateful for that and it has been a source of happiness for me. I’m older now, I’ve lost my angst—I mean, what kind of angst could I have at this point? I don’t want to connect with that; I want to connect with another energy, which is harder. Well, it’s always a little bit twisted, ’cause I’m not a happy person; but as far as the energy, I feel that it is a positive energy, instead of it being about something with suffering.
EB: Do you wake up with these visions?
LC: I just like to activate a canvas, put some paint down and then things start merging and then I paint, I paint, I paint, turn it upside down, leave it alone. I work on several at the same time and then one image starts merging and then it’s like a little family, two brothers and a little sister; somehow they are a little bit related. And then they just start coming out like that.
EB: Do you feel like you are prolific?
LC: I haven’t really had a problem with producing cause I paint. It’s just like I don’t think about it. It doesn’t mean it works out, I make a lot of bad paintings but I’m painting and because of that, things are always happening and things come out. You have to be present, you have to be there cause then it can happen—or not. You give yourself room for failure. If you are expecting anything or expecting any kind of result, that’s when you start thinking and then you start holding back. In a way, you have to care but not care in a way; ride that a little bit and see where it goes.
EB: I thought you said you never go anywhere ’cause you are always painting?
LC: I just actually applied for a passport a couple of weeks ago. My first passport. My father-in-law is in Germany and he really wants us to visit. I’ve never been to Europe. I’ve never been anywhere actually except to Vancouver; that’s embarrassing. I have been to Chicago, I love Chicago; and I have gone back to Miami a couple of times ’cause I have had an incredible need to get some Cuban food. There is an amazing place called Versailles. It’s all glass, very kitschy; the waitresses wear green polyester uniforms.
EB: When did you move here and how come?
LC: Not a specific thing; I really wanted something totally different. I had never visited Seattle, so it was blind. I moved out here, and my family moved about a month later. My mom, my grandparents, my sister,

and her kids all live in Ballard.
EB: Are you getting any success with your paintings?
LC: I like that I am connecting with this work ,and that I do find satisfying. I can’t say that I’ve ever been successful as a painter or an artist in that way. But I’ve been doing it for 25 years and in that sense consider myself successful. I haven’t stopped doing it and I don’t think I can. I haven’t put myself in a situation that I have to rely on that being a certain level of success. I can operate on a very minimal level of success.
EB: What is a typical day like for you then?
LC: I wake up and have “kwaffee.” I’m not a morning person, so it takes me a while to get into myself in a way. I’m very disorientated when I wake up in the morning. I don’t even feel human. I check my emails, go on Facebook—I love Facebook—I come here to the studio and I paint for a few hours then I go home.
And I like to walk around downtown. The city gives me energy. I feed off of it for sure, and just all the random stuff that happens; you see unexpected things. I find that to be incredibly exciting and stimulating. Sometimes I’m seeing choreography; I’m hearing music. Not what you might normally consider ,but I see people performing what I think are creative things might be considered some other kind of behavior. I think that’s how I interpret things; I’m not too analytical. I feel things. I like to absorb things like a sponge, and sometimes I see things that are incredibly sad but I let that ride through me. All of that is information I use. Somehow, it comes out.
EB: Do you have a show coming up?
LC: I do but it is a mystery and it has to be anonymous and I think it is in Miami also.
EB: Would you like to do more shows here?
LC: I love working with store owners and merchants. And I do have my work at SAM Gallery. I’ve been there for eight years.
EB: But another thing you’ve done is commercialize the Bummerbunny. You’ve got the Bummerbunny T-shirt; you’ve got the pins. Do you have mugs?
LC: I would love to have coffee mugs actually. That was like an experiment. My friend Ritchie said it was like a graphic image. I started making iron-on T- shirts and people would come up to me and ask me, “Where did you get that,” and I would make one for them. I’ve never done that before, treated what I’ve done as a business.
The irony is that it helps me connect more and has given me more energy to go on doing what I’m doing. I feel less isolated, ’cause I’m constantly giving things to people, which is part of my nature anyway. I make connections with people, little feelings of togetherness.

(You can see Laura’s work online at lauracastellanos.com.)