Focussing heavily on the process, Lauren Christmas composes expressive and gestural work using a wide range of media. Christmas will use drawing media such as charcoal, graphite and pastels combined with acrylic paint and water colour to create layers of mark making on either canvas or board. Her wide use of mark making generates explosive yet balanced compositions. Using an automatic approach to making marks, she develops an abundance of layers on her canvases.

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Automatism is a key aspect of Christmas’ art relating to the way in which her body moves when applying media to the surface. With little to no intuition, she creates fluid and spontaneous mark making. A key rule within Christmas’ work focusses on the aesthetic balance of each piece which allows the artist to come to conclusions within her work. Experimentation plays its part in affecting the development of her expressive marks and her freedom of movement of media. In addition to producing her mixed media pieces, Christmas uses photography as an automatic response to her surroundings. Capturing line, texture and colour, a collection of inspiration is gathered that she uses within her physical work.

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Complementary colours such as warm yellow ochres accompanied with Prussian blues can be seen flourishing within her work. As they collide on the canvas, colours combined with mark making produce an array of information for the audience to absorb. The simplicity yet importance of line is emphasised as it is the uniting element within her work.

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Some artistic influence that has formed the way in which Christmas works comes from artists influenced by Abstract Expressionism such as Cy Twombly, and Joan Mitchell as well as contemporary instances like Amy Sillman. A theme that occurs persistently throughout their work is the confident use of mark making that enables them to create a dialogue between line and form, which is an idea that is similarly translated through Christmas’ work.