LAURA SHABOTT is a graduate of School of Museum of Fine Arts at TUFTS, Boston, with multiple self-directed Returning Residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC), Provincetown. She is known for working directly from life using sweeping gestural forms, vibrant color and bold brushwork. Shabott’s post-college training at FAWC and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum is evident in her process-based approach. A studio artist, she is also an art teacher and lecturer with a deep commitment for sharing the history of Provincetown art. In a departure from her painterly figurative expressive works, Shabott’s series I AM HERE explores the hand as motif and symbol. Used since prehistory as a marker of place, a form of ritual and as magic and myth to keep away dark forces. Shabott is using her own hand and her arm to create. The shapes overlap, push up as in protest, or pull down from the heavens as an act of creation. “I am taking my work with the human form, my obsession for the last nine years, and abstracting a part of the body that holds significant cultural meaning.” Emily Mergel writes in ARTSCOPE magazine “Shabott continually draws inspiration from abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann and breaks forms into their most evocative essentials…She seizes the opportunity to burst the gallery walls, speaking with intentional gesture in visual vocabulary all her own.” Her paintings, collages and drawings have been exhibited regionally with solo, juried or invitational shows at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown; Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, MA; Ely Center for Contemporary Arts, New Haven, CT; Four Eleven Gallery, Provincetown; Provincetown Art Association and Museum, (PAAM); Provincetown Monument and Museum (PMPM); Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, Truro, Shabott has work is in the permanent collection of PAAM and will have a solo show YOU ONLY GET ONE BODY October of 2025 at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, Boston.