Laine Justice, Kitten Forest, Kitten Sky

42" x 42"

Oil, pigment, yellow glass chips, fluorescent and interference paint, crayon, pencil, graphite on canvas wrapped panel

Laine was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1981 and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Summers spent in the South with her grandmother, a ceramicist, and her aunt, a painter, nurtured her early love for art and making. At age 11, she began formal life drawing classes at the Portland Art Museum and later continued studying on her own using a treasured, inherited correspondence course from the Art Instruction School. Both experiences were unexpectedly cut short during her early teens.

At 14, Laine’s life took a stark turn when she was taken—without warning or consent—to North Idaho, where she spent her formative years in CEDU, a network of group homes and wilderness programs rooted in Synanon, a cult known for its harsh behavioral modification tactics. The program imposed extreme restrictions on autonomy, education, and personal identity, using pseudopsychology and ritualized control to reshape children's behavior and beliefs. Laine’s sense of self was dismantled and redefined in this isolating environment—an experience that continues to inform her work, where she explores the evolving nature of identity, the hidden inner worlds we create to survive, and the deep connection between memory, place, and transformation.
Returning to Portland at eighteen, Laine studied life drawing at Pacific Northwest College of Art before transferring to Pratt Institute in New York. She earned her BFA in painting from Pratt in 2003, with additional study in sculpture and painting in Lucca, Italy, supported by a Gilman travel grant, where she learned traditional paint-making and became enamored with the sculptural qualities of paint.

Laine is a San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Award Finalist and recipient of both a Community Foundation Sonoma Award and Chalk Hill Residency Fellowship. Her paintings have been featured in solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Sonoma Valley Museum and Di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art. Her work is held in permanent collections at The Oliver Ranch and Denver Health Medical Center, and has been featured in major publications including House Beautiful, Luxe Magazine, Sonoma Magazine, and San Francisco Magazine.

Living with multiple chronic conditions including Lupus, ME/CFS, and POTS, Laine’s studio practice focuses on working within disability. She creates a limited series of oil paintings and commissions every one to two years, alongside water based works in the form of scrolls, artist books, textiles, and works on paper.
Laine lives and works in Northern California with her husband, son, and their pug, Bernie, surrounded by open space and its creatures who are an ever changing inspiration.