Opus Art has just added a new artist to its roster whose work I've taken an instant liking to.

Laurie Lipton was born in New York and began drawing at the age of four. She was the first person to graduate with honors from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pennsylvania with a Fine Arts Degree in Drawing. She has lived in Holland, Belgium, Germany and France and has made her home in London since 1986.

Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the USA. Lipton was inspired by the religious paintings of the Flemish School. She tried to teach herself how to paint in the style of the 17th century Dutch Masters and failed.

"I wanted to learn to paint like the 17th century Flemish Masters", she says "but no one could teach me. It was all abstract and conceptual art at my university, so I cut my classes and sat for hours in the library copying Durer, Memling and Van Eyck. I tried to teach myself how to paint in egg-tempera but constantly failed. Finally I developed a way of drawing that mimicked the technique by building up thousands of tiny lines to get a tone. It was an insane way to draw, and took a horrendous amout of time, but I was able to get the same kind of luminous detail that the Flemish painters had achieved."

Check out the works available by Lipton on Opus' site. Don't forget her official website, this interview with the artist, and here for more images of the artist's work and a short statement on Saatchi's site.