About the Artist

Laurie Onderdonk Knox is a painter based in Santa Cruz, California. Her studio is located at 2593 Mission Street in Santa Cruz, open by appointment. Her early works are in the impressionist style, and those oil paintings focus on seascapes and harbor reflections found in her local area, as well as still life renditions. She continues to strive to reach color harmony through the use of a limited palette, and utilizes vibrant, balanced color combinations and purposeful brush strokes to convey movement.  For the past couple of years, the artist has delved into the realm of creating abstract and abstract expressionist pieces in acrylic and pastel. Her ever expanding collections explore harmony created through line, color juxtapositions, and brush stroke movement.

She launched her professional art journey later in life, after raising five children and having pursued careers in law and business. While she did benefit from an art class taken in college (live figure drawing in charcoal), she truly began her art journey at the Palo Alto Art League and through her mentor Valerie Collymore and her selection to the Collymore Atelier's Emerging Artist Program (2020-'22). Laurie's mother is an accomplished watercolorist, and she is proud to be directly descended from Robert Jenkins Onderdonk (1852-1917) and his son (Robert) Julian Onderdonk (1882-1922), American impressionist painters based in San Antonio, Texas and best known for their signature bluebonnets, one of which resided in the Oval Office during the George W. Bush presidency. (See artist pictured above with a commission work placed in a private client's home, and shown below in her former studio with a client and his new painting.)