Laura Spong (1926-2018) was living in the mid-1950s conservative south when she embarked on a journey to prominence in the initially male-dominated painting genre of Abstract Expressionism. In her words, “I love nothing better than to throw paint and lines on a canvas and then solve the problem I have created, the problem being how to pull a coherent painting out of a chaos of lines, shapes and colors. As I solve those problems, I portray my inner journey as I search for meaning and purpose in life.”

Laura was instructed by J. (Jesse Redwin) Bardin, who studied art in NYC and introduced NY paragons to Columbia, SC residents. During her six-decade art career, she became renowned, regionally & abroad - from the capital of SC to the capital of Switzerland – when one of her paintings was displayed in the US Embassy in Bern as part of the US Department of State’s office of Art in Embassies Exhibition. In 2017, Laura received the SC Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement. She lives on in the memories and emotions evoked by her paintings, available at award-winning OTM Gallery (est. 2014), along with those by thirty of her peers from Columbia and the Southeast.