Laura Jane Hegarty (b.2000, Derry, Ireland) is an emerging visual artist and researcher based in Scotland whose work investigates a varying formula of light, touch, time and beauty. She works predominantly in cyanotype and photography, building sculpture and installation from these mediums, with sunlight as a key shared material in her practice.

Through philosophy and neuroscience, Hegarty seeks to understand why everyday phenomena feels so profound and touching: the movement of a gentle breeze through curtains, the warm touch of skin-to-skin, or sunlight trickling through foliage above. Her research explores our shared sensory systems - the tools we are all equipped with to perceive the world and connect to each other. Through material and technique, she translates these visceral somatic feelings into art, drawing the viewer's attention to tactile sensations available to us daily but often unnoticed.

In her practice she seeks a slower, softer approach - one of noticing, existing and being in the exact moment. She makes work that creates space for contemplation and tactile connections through its visual materialities. Her goal is to make art that can connect with anyone, within or outside the art world, reaching people on a sensory level to give glimpses of understanding and clarity.

After completing her MA Fine Art and Art History at Edinburgh College of Art, where her cyanotype and somatic practice began, Hegarty spent time on a residency in Berlin exploring sunlight and seasonality before embarking on a Masters in Contemporary Philosophy and Philosophy of Science at the University of Athens beginning October of this year.