Mosaic Featured Artist: Lura Wilhelm

Lura Wilhelm is a Redding-based artist, muralist, swimmer, and arts educator. Her work explores the space between observation and memory, often beginning from life and evolving in the studio through intuitive color and recollection, transforming familiar scenes into expressive, emotional impressions.

A series of swimmer portraits reflects her background as an open-water marathon swimmer and her connection to movement, endurance, and time. Rooted in daily sketching from life, her practice informs larger paintings and murals where rhythm, contrast, and shape are central. Lura is also a longtime arts educator at University Preparatory School, teaching grades 6–12.

Artist Bio

Lura Wilhelm is an artist, muralist, swimmer, and arts educator based in Redding, California. Her work in this exhibition explores the tension between direct observation and remembered experience, moving fluidly between what is seen and what is felt.

Many of the paintings begin in front of the subject, then continue in the studio, where Lura redraws and repaints from memory using intuitive, sometimes arbitrary color choices. This shifting distance from the source allows familiar scenes to become abstracted, emotional records rather than literal depictions. A series of swimmer portraits, drawn from her own memories in the water, reflects her background as an open-water marathon swimmer and her deep connection to movement, time, and endurance.

Lura’s practice is rooted in constant sketching and drawing from life. She regularly fills sketchbooks with studies of the mundane and everyday or whatever is directly in front of her. This is a way to document her life and sharpen her ability to translate three-dimensional space into two-dimensional marks. These daily practices inform her larger paintings and murals, where contrast, shape, and rhythm carry as much weight as subject matter.

In addition to her studio work, Lura is an active muralist and long-time arts educator at University Preparatory School, where she teaches students in grades 6–12. Across all of her roles, she sees art-making as a way to communicate, to pay attention, and to create moments of shared experience between artist, subject, and viewer.

Mosaic Gallery | 826 Sundial Bridge Drive

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