In 2013, after a thirty-year interest in ceramics, Lawrie changed creative direction and returned to working in two dimensions and his work moved from representation to abstraction. He is particularly focused on the metaphysical and the many random, fleeting instants that collectively make up our lives. He is interested in how the infinite number of human experiences can converge and form junctures that invisibly connect moments, places and people together.

He supplements his learning with the study of cognitive neuroscience, and is slowly beginning to understand how the eye and the brain process visual information. Both organs working together to enable us understand our environment, one part of this understanding comes from our instinctive and learned response to colours. He uses some of these principles to create his work. Carefully considered palettes are complicated by the need to anticipate how these colour relationships will change as the viewer’s spatial and therefore emotional relationship to the piece changes.
Lawrie largely works with simple geometric forms so that the viewer can be more receptive the colours and therefore “experience” without the distraction of figurative forms.