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As an artist, craftsmanship and a keen eye for the beautiful and special are essential. Lara Weiler sees the extraordinary in small, everyday moments and conventional everyday objects, and immortalises them on canvas.
Lara Weiler is only just starting out in her career. The 24-year- old is currently in her final year as a student at art and design university HBKsaar in the German Saarland, and her outstanding artistic talent and vision are already attracting attention. “I know it sounds clichéd, but art has always been my life. I started drawing as soon as I was able to hold a pencil, and am still at it today,” she tells us in her modest, friendly manner. Lara’s cheer- ful nature extends through to her art: “I want to make beautiful, positive art. To create a space in which to enjoy the simple things in life.”
Of Everyday Heroes an Quiet Moments…
She draws her inspiration for her paintings from realism and hyperrealism, and has spent a great deal of time exploring and experimenting with classic still life. Although the subject of the ‘nature morte’ remains at the centre of her work, there is a greater focus on formal reduction and structure.
Her paintings currently feature ‘everyday heroes’ as their subject, i.e. everyday objects that harbour a magnificence that is all too often overlooked: “This magnificence can be the beauty of nature, cleanliness, good food or a parent’s love,” explains the artist. They are images that everyone is familiar with: a chair being used as makeshift clothes rack, a fleeting glimpse of the tea towels folded and stacked in a kitchen cupboard or a lunch box that’s been left in a school bag over the summer holidays and whose contents have taken on a life of their own. Immortalising these mundane, everyday images on canvas paints them in a whole new light, and they become worthy of a closer look: Art is, after all, ennobling.
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“I WANT TO MAKE BEAUTIFUL, POSITIVE ART. TO CREATE A SPACE IN WHICH TO ENJOY THE SIMPLE THINGS IN LIFE”
Lara Weiler
Between Art and Reality
Hidden among the handmade canvases, brushes and tins of paint in Lara’s studio at HBKsaar are small, humorous sculptures that, in true trompe-l’oeil style, could at first glance pass for ordinary everyday objects, but on closer inspection elicit surprise with unexpected details. While the everyday mundane is elevated to art in Lara’s paintings, art creeps into everyday life via her sculptures.
A fascinating interaction with a clear statement behind it: Reality is usually more beautiful than we think. “Media – especially social media – often conveys a negative distorted image of reality. You often see things you don’t want to see,” says the artist. This doesn’t by any means suggest some sort of wilful ignorance on Lara’s part: “There are many artists who draw on the bad and the ugly in the world in their work. And that’s good, and important. But I personally wanted my art to heighten awareness of the beauty in the little, mundane things in life.”
During our conversation, Lara also talks about Luxembourg’s flourishing art scene. And we think it’s safe to say that Lara’s unique perspective is set to take this thriving art scene, and perhaps even the international art scene by storm.
Photos: © KACHEN/Marc Dostert
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Instagram: @larawlr