Lara, or of the color
by Giuliana Matthieu
Faces that explode with color, colors that eat the canvas and invade the environment, saturated to the point that you are not able to distinguish objects and external contours, while watching everything break down into the fullness of triumphant red, intense blue, saturated yellow and nothing looks the same to you any longer, the way they did before you knew her.
She, Lara, once again, a surprise for the eyes, she seems so fragile like air could break her and so strong with that smile - somewhere between amused and curious, it’s almost as if the others, the spectators should give her an explanation to fill an emptiness that perhaps, not even she knows. Once again her weakness is in stark contrast with the strength of her faces, full and aware of the extreme discomfort that they can provoke in the viewer, where the greens, blues, reds which color the shadowed areas are all the expression of the conscious will of the artist. She knows and wants to tell the stories of her faces, sometimes in bright colors, incredible in their remoteness from real life even bordering on insanity, sweet madness, maybe her own madness. In any event, it is that which prevents the viewer from doubting that the colors spread about on the canvas filling cheeks and mouths are not the right ones and that the natural pink of the cheek cannot generate the red or blue. To the point that you do not even know the contrary. You eventually become a part of the face that sometimes verges on the grotesque, and breathe its air to the point of shouting your own approval. Yet in those faces where the color saturation has no intermediate steps and rules out any transition from one gradient to another, the eyes retain their identity. Fluid and mobile. Questioning, or doubtful. Melancholy and aggressive and immersed in amazing and unreal dense color, all elements contributing to become part and parcel of one coherent work of art, without a shadow of doubt. Lara and her impossible, incredible and yet true faces, are as genuine as her passion which stampedes and becomes real in her slightly mad painting.