Artist Spotlight – Laura Zecchin

Laura Zecchin has been taking photos her whole life, influenced by her father, who always had a camera around. She would borrow his Instamatic and use it to capture whatever she saw. 

Growing up in a creative family, Laura said she was inspired by her father and brother, who both worked in creative fields. Her father was a landscape designer and painted in oil and watercolor. Her brother studied architecture and found his career in that field.

“I started drawing when I was little, and even when I was a teenager,” Laura said. “I loved pencil drawing, but photography, that’s what I gravitated toward.” She had found her artistic calling.

When she first started shooting with a digital camera in 2014, Laura said it was just for fun. Her style was developing, along with the detailed black and white prints she created. Her friends began to show interest in her work, and a secondary career was born.

If you visit Laura’s studio at the Art Center, you’ll see the main subjects of her work there. She has a way of capturing the personalities of her favorite subjects, which are often dogs and horses. 

“I just get into the arena with them,” she says, of capturing horses in moments of playfulness or solitude. “I see who they are, I let them get used to me, and I snap a lot of photos.” She then returns to her studio and sifts through the hundreds of shots to find the perfect moments captured. She doesn’t do a lot of processing, often just cropping in on the main subject.

Laura was born and raised in Italy and came to the United States as a teenager in the late 1980s. She landed in Los Angeles, where she lived until 2021, when she began splitting her time between Kentucky and California. 

That’s when landscapes crept into her work. “I fell in love with it when I came to Kentucky, just to see all the beautiful barns, and fall colors…” 

A lifelong love of horses is what called Laura to Kentucky. “There’s just something about the horse,” she said, “that’s just my passion.” She still has her drawings of stick-figure horses from kindergarten.

During covid, she began to explore opportunities in the region as part of her career in property management. She started looking in Nashville, but was quickly drawn to the old architecture and beautiful homes in Kentucky. As soon as she was able to travel, she made her first trip to Kentucky. “It just felt like home,” she said of landing in Lexington for the first time. She now splits her time between Danville and Orange County, California.

Laura’s work also includes architecture, and she loves creating abstract images from simple everyday objects. She prints on unusual materials, like canvas and metal, giving her photos a more artistic, fine-art feel. 

Laura first came to the Art Center when she moved here in 2022. She spotted the Center and called to see what we have going on here. That’s when she learned about The Gathering Artists. She attended her first meeting and found her creative home. “I really fell in love with the arts community, what the Art Center provides, and all the people in the group have become really good friends.”

To see Laura’s work, visit the Art Center and check out her studio. She also has work available for sale in our gift shop, Fern Curated Gifts.