Lauren Toomer is a visual artist whose loosely figurative work explores life's stillness and quiet moments. Her primary medium is graphite drawing, though she also creates outdoor installations. Toomer received her MFA from Stanford University, where she also completed coursework in anatomy, and holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley. Her honors include the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Fellowship from the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Grand Gold Award from the Council for Advancement of Secondary Education for her leadership and artistic role in creating the COVID-19 Memorial project Apart-Together at Stanford.

Toomer holds joint lecturing appointments in the Department of Art & Art History and the Department of Surgery at Stanford University. She actively leads medical humanities and visual arts programming through the Stanford School of Medicine (SoM), serving as Associate Director of Visual Arts for the Medicine & the Muse Program. She has developed Stanford’s art and anatomy curriculum and teaches interdisciplinary courses.

Her artworks are permanently displayed at the Fair Oaks Health Center, Kaiser Permanente in California, Stanford’s Center for Clinical Sciences Research (CCSR), and the Center for Academic Medicine. Some of Toomer’s exhibition history has included the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, the Museum of Craft and Design, and the Annual Global Fund for Women Benefit. Toomer maintains a studio practice in San Francisco.

Artist Statement:

Like an eyelash falling into the eye, these small ruptures awaken us not only to what is seen but also to what is felt, carried, and remembered. I often return to the sense of disorientation, in the fullest sense of that word, in my drawings. I am drawn to what rests on the edges of perception—those in-between spaces where memory stirs and where the body becomes a site of quiet knowing.

These themes take on new resonance within the context of Reflections of the Great Migration. My work does not depict literal journeys but leans into their echoes: the silence that follows departure, the weight of stories passed down, the way absence can shape a presence. The Great Migration transformed the lives of millions, yet much of its legacy lives in fragments—in gestures, in shadows, in the spaces between generations.