LAURA BROWNING
About Laura Browning
Born in Berkeley, California, Laura Browning is a contemporary painter celebrated for her luminous oil paintings that explore the interplay of light, color, and water. Raised amid the California coast’s shifting light and seaside landscapes, she is drawn to the sensations of place and memory—especially the way light dances across water’s surface. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the rhythm of the Pacific continues to shape her artistic vision.
Browning received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing & Painting from California State University, Long Beach (2000), grounding her practice in both technical discipline and conceptual inquiry. Early in her career she deepened her engagement with art history and museum culture as an intern at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, and as a museum educator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. These formative experiences nurtured her dual interests in artistic expression and audience connection.
Her paintings are rooted in a sustained investigation of light as a physical and emotional phenomenon. Browning explains that her work springs from “the shifting rhythm of light as it reflects and refracts across water,” and that each piece is an attempt to distill the sensation of sunlit surfaces into color and form. Through thin, transparent layers of oil glaze, she captures the fleeting dialogue between stillness and motion, memory and perception—creating works that are both meditative and deeply evocative.
Browning’s exhibition record is international in scope, with solo presentations such as Refraction at Illumine Gallery in Palm Springs (2025) and Laura Browning’s World at Ocean Day Gallery in Tokyo (2024), and group shows spanning the U.S. and Asia. Her work is represented by galleries including Stephanie Breitbard Fine Arts (San Francisco), KW Contemporary (Kennebunk, Maine), and E Gallery (Shanghai), and is collected by major institutions such as Apollo Global Management and the Mayo Clinic, where commissioned works form part of permanent collections. In addition to gallery representation, Browning’s paintings have been featured in publications such as Modern Luxury Interiors (2025) and included in curated design contexts by West Elm and Williams Sonoma Home.
Throughout her career Browning has balanced exhibition commitments with private and public commissions that reflect her commitment to art’s experiential power. Her commissioned works inhabit private residences from San Diego to Lake Tahoe and corporate settings worldwide, while her limited editions and prints extend her reach to broader audiences. By continuing to refine her exploration of light, reflection, and the visual poetry of water, Laura Browning remains a defining voice in contemporary painting—one who invites viewers not just to see, but to feel, the subtle rhythms of nature.