Layne Stratton is a Tucson-based abstract artist working primarily in cold wax and oil, with a practice informed by encaustic methods, layered surface, and the material landscape of the Sonoran Desert. Born in Phoenix and shaped by periods in Northern California and Portland, Oregon, she returned to the Southwest in 2012, re-establishing a studio practice rooted in process, texture, atmosphere, and place.

Her work reflects a sustained engagement with making across disciplines, including drawing, ceramics, photography, painting, gardening, textiles, writing, and poetry. This broad creative history informs an intuitive approach to abstraction in which accumulations, erasure, restraint, and gesture contribute to the development of each composition.

Through layered applications of wax and pigment, Layne explores relationships between color, line, luminosity, and surface. Her paintings balance structure and spontaneity, inviting close attention to embedded textures, subtle transitions, and the interplay between material depth and visual movement.

Working from Tucson’s historic Armory Park neighborhood, Layne draws from the convergence of urban rhythm and desert quiet: long shadows, vibrant blooms, weathered metal, passing trains, native wildlife and expansive skies. Her current work considers the tensions between the built environment and the surrounding desert, as well as between surface and depth, allowing each piece to emerge through a conversation between control and accident.