On Wednesday, November 2 at 5:30 pm, The Anna Lamar Switzer Center for Visual Arts at Pensacola State College is hosting an artist presentation by Lara Sophie Benjamin, the Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival Invited International Artist for 2022.
Location: Building 15, Pensacola State College, room 1513.
Lara Sophie Benjamin is a Cypriot artist born in Nicosia, Cyprus in 1987, where she is currently based. She is a painter who works primarily in oil paints.
Lara draws subject matter from her everyday surroundings and finds significant resonance in ordinary sights and spaces. She is interested in their experiential nature, subjective and selective readings, and the light and the forms created within them.
Windows and doorways are of particular interest, with their liminal associations. They are transitional places, where time and action are suspended, where both the outside and inside are present.
The artist sees the creative process as an intimate reaction to one’s reality based on their perceptions. The outer world and the inner world come together on the canvas through the activity of painting, during which familiar shapes meet with abstract elements.
Lara works intuitively and sees painting as an unending exploration based on formal and aesthetic qualities and on the limitless potential of the material.
The process for her is a constant balancing act, with a continual push and pull of opposing forces taking place on the canvas. The painter is constructing an image, while deconstructing it at the same time, attempting to find the point where all elements hold together, but are at the same time coming apart. During the act of making, the artist oscillates between using instinct and value judgements, therefore existing somewhere between control and loss of control.