Best known for her allegorical paintings of mutant plants and animals in languishing, overgrown landscape settings or posed as though for classical still life or portraiture, Laurie Hogin’s interests include examining human impulses, desires, and needs, including pleasure, intoxication, addiction, the erotic, totem, violence, greed, grief, and love. These aspects of human experience and identity, resultant of the interplay of evolutionary biology and culture, find expression in the history of visual culture as well as in the nearly schizoid array of cultural material and commodity in contemporary consumer capital. Hogin combines various tropes from the history of painting, natural history and scientific display, pornography, fashion photography and retail display with narrative allegory, often describing political, social, economic, and emotional phenomena.

Hogin’s research interests also include cognitive approaches to understanding visual culture and creativity, and the application of theories of propaganda, pictorial narrative and imaginary space to visual materials intended for specific educational purposes. Recent and current projects include the design and implementation of a visually-based nutrition education program for elementary school children, and the design of a program for a community youth service organization to guide teens through the process of setting up a small, sustainable clothing design business. These projects, along with Hogin’s ongoing studio practice and exhibition career, inform her teaching.

Hogin’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally for more than 20 years, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, LA; Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Malibu, CA; Norton Museum, Palm Beach, FL; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MO; State of Illinois Museums at Chicago and Springfield, IL; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; International Print Center of New York; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ, Museum of Fine Arts, Albuquerque, NM.