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Lara Cobden

Norwich
Biography Lara Cobden is a figurative painter living and working in Norwich, Norfolk. Following a degree in Painting at the University of Brighton, Lara spent 11 years in Ireland before relocating to
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Rooted in a central theme of recollection and sense of place, my paintings are informed by observation, memory and dream. They are a subjective and individual response to the natural world around me, calling on an imagined, coveted past that is unreal; a magical realism. Pulling between the chimerical and the familiar - I hope there is both a stillness and fluidity in my work; in the ordinary, a sense of reverence. Paintings evolved from remembered fragments and casual snapshots shift between misty and precise, perceived reality and imagined narratives. 

I like to inhabit and explore this ‘nowhere’ or in-between place and try to collect and recreate that residue of experience; like recording details, grasping at the gossamer fabric of waking from a dream.

I am intrigued by the alchemy of paint and its facility to express voiceless emotion through intuitive choices of colour, composition and brushwork.

Recurring themes of love and loss and the desire to capture the essence of experience - a fleeting moment, ephemeral and yet resilient in its presence, are what inspire me to paint.

I like this quote from Charles Baudelaire - “Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.”

The thread pulling my work together is about 'coming home', belonging; or conversely a sense of ‘unbelonging’.

 

The leaves wrote notes to the trees on the surface of the water

By  Lara Cobden

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