The Beauty of Everyday Things

JUNE 2023

English artist, Lara Voce paints still life works which have an abstract quality. She explores everyday objects intuitively from memory, simplifying their forms and exploring texture through her application and layering of paint. The compositions are not planned they evolve through process. The works are moments in time and speak of relationships between objects and are usually representative of real life relationships. ‘Three Bowls’ is equally ‘Three People’ ‘A Mother and her Children’.

There is a luminosity to the painted surface, which is achieved through the layering, sanding back and reapplication of the paint, leaving hints of the surface below and often ghosts of previous compositions. Lara uses a palette of muted, almost dirty colours, which sing harmoniously.

Lara works from memory which explains the naïve character of the objects. She explores the composition through repetitive simplified line drawings. When the composition ‘works’, she develops these into a painting, however this often changes as she works through the layers of paint, working exclusively in acrylic which aids the immediacy of the painting process. She is inspired by the likes of William Scott, Ben Nicholson and lately Milton Avery.

Lara lives and works between the Warwickshire countryside and the Dorset coast. She studied as a Scientist at Warwick University. However, her upbringing in a house of creatives meant that Lara was pulled towards the creative world. Until recently Lara worked as a Senior Interior Designer at Aston Martin where she honed her creative eye.

Her current collection shows her eclecticism: from small minimalist paintings to larger gestural still life works. As her practice develops Lara’s work has become more primitive in its style and lighter in touch.