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Mariella Laguna, free-spirited abstract painter
from: newsday.com
by SUZANNE LABARRE
Mariella Laguna, an abstract painter from Oceanside who friends describe as a free spirit and a firebrand, died June 23 of complications from Parkinson's disease at JFK Medical Center in Atlantis, Fla., near her winter home. She was 84.
"She went to Italy one time with nothing but a pair of jeans and a backpack to create art," her sister, Dorothy Wolff Coleman, of Boca Raton, Fla., said. "Everything in her mind was about painting."
An accomplished artist, Laguna painted large-scale abstract and impressionistic landscapes, drawing inspiration from such painters as Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall, said her son, KENNY LAGUNA, president of BLACKHEART RECORDS Group in Manhattan. Skies and trees were favorite subjects.
She exhibited work in galleries along the eastern seaboard and abroad, and attracted the attention of various private collectors. The rocker JOAN JETT, KENNY LAGUNA's longtime musical collaborator, was a patron.
"I have several of her paintings and pencil drawings," Jett said in a phone interview Friday. "They're hanging in my house as we speak. She was very talented. She always did beautiful landscapes."v
Mariella Laguna was born in New York City in 1922. She studied architecture at New York University, where she met her husband, Lawrence Laguna, an architect, her son said. They lived in Greenwich Village, before moving to Oceanside in the 1950s, family said.
Unimpressed with suburban life, Mariella kept a studio in downtown Manhattan and a passel of bohemian friends nearby, KENNY LAGUNA said. "It was a little nutty in the house," he said. "There were parties where everybody would end up naked."
Mariella Laguna visited around half a dozen artists' colonies in 35 years, including the MacDowell Colony, in New Hampshire - where Leonard Bernstein notably completed "Mass" and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
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"There are some people who come through the VCCA, who you don't get to know," said Sheila Pleasants, director of artists' services at the Amherst, Va., colony, where Laguna was a five-time fellow. "But there are other people who are personable and outgoing. She was one of those."
Lawrence Laguna, who designed what is now the Guantanamo Bay Naval Air Station in Cuba, died of kidney failure in 2004.
Mariella started spending winters in Lake Worth, Fla., several years ago. She continued painting until just months before her death. "She would go down to the beach and everybody would watch her paint," Coleman said. "Her whole purpose in life was just to create art."
In addition to Coleman and KENNY LAGUNA, of Rockville Centre, Mariella Laguna is survived by another son, Sanford Laguna of Hollywood, Fla.
Memorial services are pending.
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