LARA BOWEN
Still life and sunlight
As well as running the gallery Lara works on her own paintings and creative projects.
The daughter of a horologist and a dancer, Lara is inspired by the tick-tock of time and expressing what it is to be alive. Recording moments has been a compulsion since losing the majority of photos of her childhood in her teens. Since then she has been intrigued by people's life stories, how our memories work, and how colours and light stimulate our experiences and spark our recollections.
A tangle of blooms, a snippet of blue sky, a shard of strong sunlight and the short-lived relationship between a favourite mug and a collection of random blooms. Plants, flowers and organic forms are Lara's go-to language but as a metaphor for the passing of time and as an investigation of personal experiences and memories, being in the moment and attempting to capture joy.
In recent years a more abstract approach has developed in Lara's work. These paintings have a different energy. They are bolder, looser, and happier. They explore pigment and the gossamer shift between tones, the emotional connections we have with words or colours, or the shapes and textures found in harbours, coastlines, or her pebble collection.
" The way I create is not a straight line. I work in series, or projects, depending on mood or what has recently inspired me to paint. Acknowledging these different pockets of inspiration allows me to move between them as they influence each other. "
CURRENT COLLECTION
LARA'S STUDIO
I work in an old mews studio behind the gallery in Hove. The space is beautifully cool in the summer months but ice-cold in winter, so I paint the memories and experiences of the previous warmer months. It's as if I'm trying to magic summer sunshine with paint.
Exploring the tick-tock of existence is my starting point when painting. I am inspired by our natural surroundings, seasonal changes and how this cycle both generates and recalls sensations and precious, joyful memories.
Working from sketches and photographs I use inks, oils, wax and various drawing media to build layers of texture, mark and colour. Sometimes I remove entire sections of work to reveal the ghost of those marks, only to then work into them again until the painting pings to life.
I spend time in gardens and beside lakes, exploring rock pools and drinking in the reflections and refractions. This generates momentum for an evolving series of paintings which are about shards of sunlight and snippets of blue skies between the tangle of growth; the above and the underneath; reflected and shaded; the crystal clear and the murkier, more confusing things.
Attempting to capture memory and emotion using coloured substances applied to a surface is compulsive and the flirt with that elusive creative magic is addictive.