Lara Feldman
b.1972, South Africa, lives and works in London.
Lara Feldman deals with image and memory, however her practice as a painter returns her to colour. Like
Milton Avery, the talking point is confidently the same, it is always colour. Her visual language shape-shifts
depending on where she is taking inspiration from, but a central aspect of her work references growing up in
her beloved native city of Cape Town, South Africa. Feldman records the figures and the landscape they
inhabit through vivid colour and a painterly approach to creating dusky and nebulous figurative scenes
through oil on canvas. Recalling the soft nostalgic light of Cape Town, she looks to swaying, joyously
careless palm trees, a recurring symbol and image she uses, to connote longing and desire for the city she
loves, or to consider home as a far-off land. Through her colour she captures the quality of Cape light, what
might conventionally be termed ‘Mediterranean’.
Feldman’s gestural oil paintings re-presented and re-frame images from her bank of photographs that she has
taken, Feldman works with an immediacy to record and interpret moments from her life, both real and
imagined, both friends and strangers. Her figurations appear hazed in memory, often with colours bleeding or
melting into one another. Feldman is explorative in her approach to painting, focusing on the personal as a
prism to question the proximity to her subject. Feldman’s grasp of the medium is reflected in her construction
and composition of image, using abstraction in her editing of ‘reality’, as well as her ordering of surfaces,
painterly effects, and the creation of studied portraits, interiors and ciphers of landscape.
Since moving to London in 2018, Feldman’s practice was developed by the UAL Foundation Diploma in Art
& Design at City Lit, from which she graduated in 2022.
Selected Exhibitions:
2024 - Upcoming group exhibition, ‘What binds us’, Kupfer Projects, London
2024 - Group exhibition, Drawing Open, No Format Gallery, London
2024 - Shortlisted for The Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery, London
2024 - Solo exhibition, ‘Traces of home’, Chandler house, Cape Town
2024 - Group exhibition, ‘Works on Paper 2024’, The Gallery at Green and Stone, London
2023 - Group exhibition, ‘Not Identikit’, Greenwoods Law Firm, London
2023 - Group exhibition, ‘South African Portrait Award’ (Top 40) Rust en Vrede Gallery, Cape Town
2023 - Long listed for ‘Woman in Art prize’, UK
2023 - Group exhibition, ‘CAS Summer Exhibition 2023’, Chelsea Town Hall, London
2023 - Group exhibition, ‘Beyond the white cubes’, City Lit Gallery, London
2023 - Group exhibition, Drawing is free’, Paris College of Art, Paris
2023 - Group exhibition, ‘Where art meets fashion’, Shangrila Cape Town
2023 - Solo exhibition, ‘Nature’, George Northwood Salon, London
2022 - Group exhibition, ‘Got Junk Vol 2’, The Fourth, Cape Town
2022 - Group exhibition, ‘There, yet’, Downstairs Brixton, London
2022 - Group exhibition, ‘Stilte’, The Voorkamer at Chandler House, Cape Town
2021 - Group exhibition, ‘100 Reasons to come to Cape Town’, The Voorkamer at Chandler House, Cape Town
2020 - Group exhibition, The Spectacle, The Fourth Art gallery/Concept store, Cape Town
2020 - Online exhibition, Palm tree paintings, Sister by Studio Ashby, London
2020 - ‘Hadeda’ pop up at Anthropologie, Kings Road, London, Cape Town
2020 - Group exhibition, ‘The Grand’, Rust en Vrede Gallery, Cape Town
2020 - Solo exhibition, ‘Oasis” The Voorkamer at Chandler House, Cape Town
2019 - Group exhibition “Wildflower”, Salon 91, Cape Town
2019 - Long listed for Sanlam Portrait Competiton, Rust en Vrede Gallery, Cape Town
2019 - Group exhibition ‘Even artists get the blues’, The Voorkamer at Chandler House, Cape Town
2019 - Group exhibition ‘Raindance”, The Voorkamer at Chandler House, Cape Town
2018 - Group exhibition ‘Folklore’, Salon 91, Cape Town
2018 - Solo exhibition ‘In their nature’, The Voorkamer at Chandler House, Cape Town
2017 - Group exhibition ‘Portraits’, Rust en Vrede Gallery, Cape Town
2017 - Group exhibition ‘Trees make forests’, Salon 91, Cape Town
2017 - Group exhibition ‘Members exhibition’, The Association of Visual Arts, Cape Town
2017 - Group exhibition ‘Hour Show’, The Voorkamer at Chandler House, Cape Town
2016 - Group exhibition ‘Spirit of Irma’, Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town
2016 - Group exhibition ‘Oracle’, Salon 91, Cape Town
2016 - Group exhibition ‘Space Between, The Cape Town Jewish Museum, Cape Town
2016 - Group exhibition ‘Under 18’s only’ The Association of Visual Arts, Cape Town
2016 - Cape Town Art Fair, Smith Studio
2015 - Group exhibition ‘Summer Salon’, The Association of Visual Arts, Cape Town
2015 - Group exhibition ‘Stellar’, Salon 91, Cape Town
2015 - Group exhibition ‘Resonance and Wonder’ at the Cape Town Jewish Museum, Cape Town
2015 - Cape Town Art Fair, with Salon 91, Cape Town
2014 - Group exhibition ‘Golden Haze’, Salon 91, Cape Town
2013 - Solo exhibition ‘Roadscapes’, The Association of Visual Arts, Cape Town
2013 - Cape Town Art Fair, with Salon 91
2013 - Group exhibition ‘The Shining Girls’ Cape Town School of Photography, Cape Town
2012 - Group exhibition at Mini Cooper showroom with Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town
2013 - Group exhibition ‘Collections and Archives’ Salon 91, Cape Town
2013 - Group exhibition ‘Collections and Archives’ Salon 91, Cape Town
2012 - Group exhibition at Mini Cooper showroom with Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town
2012 - Group exhibition ‘I’d rather be swimming’, Salon91, Cape Town
2012 - Group exhibition { Impression : Sunset }, Salon 91, Cape Town
2011 - Group exhibition ‘Rose Korbers Summer Art Salon’, Rose Korber, Cape Town
2011 - Group exhibition’Figuring Difference’, Salon91, Cape Town
2010 - Group exhibition’Coppertone 77’, Salon91, Cape Town
2010 - Group exhibition’Mini Me, The Association of Visual Arts, Cape Town
2010 - Group exhibition ‘Tretchikoff & Me’at Salon91, Cape Town
2010 - Solo exhibition ‘Transition, Emergence & The Parts In Between’at Salon91, Cape Town
2010 - Group exhibition ‘Recent & new works’at Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town
2010 - Group exhibition Art Salon, The Association of Visual Arts, Cape Town
2009 - Group exhibition at Spencer Street Studios, Cape Town