The Skyscapes series combines the two things the artist loves most – the sky and animals.

The artist creates fantastical landscapes filled with numerous animals, birds and flora, big and small that fit together like a puzzle. In her imagination she sees these animal landscapes up in the sky.

Laine Justice

Storming Summer Falling Winter

watercolor on cold press watercolor paper scroll

42″ x 112″

These animal composite landscapes are “what I imagine when you look up at night, searching, for all the things you can feel in the world or you look up into clouds during the day, for that shape in a cloud”.

”I often paint the sky as a blue day sky, filled with all the animals and all the birds, as well as a deeper night sky, and long before that, in pencil, just so that I could study these sorts of shapes without a palette”.

“The night sky has always been a place that has provided me with a lot of solace when things are difficult. It takes only a few seconds of staring up there to remember all the centuries that have gone by before me and after, all the animals and people underneath it with me, and all the stars past earth”.

Laine Justice

Monster Bird (Animal Composite)

watercolor and graphite on arches hot press watercolor paper

22 x 30 in

The pink sky paintings were made “during that time the sky was pink or these shades of grey with yellow from wild fire smoke that kept us inside for so long. I found it so oppressive, but also so beautiful and ominous and this natural element would not leave us, and it would be returning time and again, a new part of the world”.

Laine Justice

Flying Pink Pony

watercolor on arches hot press watercolor paper

22 x 30 in

Laine Justice

Prancing Flying Cats

watercolor on arches hot press watercolor paper

22 x 30 in

The “In the Meadow” series were painted from life in the fall of 2021 at Sea Ranch, California. They are gestural watercolors of the deer and animals as they were moving about the landscape. The artist’s intention was to paint how it felt more than how things were exactly. Deer, elk, and reindeer have been the artists favorite animals lately, “and the colors on the coast where so beautiful, such a change in color after being inside and subjected to my own color choices so often”.

Laine Justice

[Pretend Birds] In the Meadow

watercolor on hot press watercolor paper

22.5 x 30.37

Laine Justice

Deer in the meadow #4

watercolor on hot press watercolor paper

22.5 x 30.37

After returning from Sea Ranch Laine made some more deer drawings from her imagination.

Laine Justice

Winter Fog Reindeer Rainbow

watercolor, ink, and graphite on hot press paper

22.25 x 30.25 in

Laine Justice

Swans and Kittens

watercolor, ink, dye, and interference acrylic on cream printmaking paper

26 x 40 in

Recently the artist is using a lot of interference, sparkles, blue and violet along with pastels, very big simple brush marks, and wash puddles.

Laine Justice was born in Birmingham Alabama, grew up in Portland, Oregon and now resides in Sonoma, California. Justice received her BFA in painting with honors from Pratt Institute, School of Fine Arts, Brooklyn, New York.

Click here to see more paintings by Laine Justice.

Fouladi Projects