Lauren Rader is an artist and art educator whose works range from stark minimalist paintings to vibrant abstract pastels. Her works are in numerous private and corporate collections, have been exhibited at the White House and were recently selected for the U.S. Embassy in Fiji. She is represented by Sharon Fine Gallery in Bethesda, Maryland and Rendezvous Gallery in Leesburg, Virginia.

Rader 's latest work is at once sparing and evocative. Her canvases work as windows on a hidden space where color and line speak of memory and mood. Some are serene and meditative -- monochromatic expressions that seem a distilled essence, free of everyday clutter and turmoil. Some canvases are slashed or stitched, conjuring eternal tensions between inner and outer, beauty and pain -- or hinting at a deeper place where only the viewer can go. Others dance, their colors and forms teasing the eye to a place of airy mystery, full of possibilities yet unknown.

Rader 's earlier works include richly colored dream-like pastels, and abstract sculptures in clay and stone. She earned her bachelor of arts at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, studied painting as a Nieman affiliate at Harvard University, and taught art for 12 years in private schools in Oakland and Berkeley, California. She resides in the Washington, D.C. area with her husband and two children.