Cyprus artist tracing the invisible

I step into Lara Sophie Benjamin’s studio on a quiet Wednesday afternoon. It had been raining earlier, so the earth still smells wet, and there is a kind of stillness in the air – fitting for meeting an artist to talk about her work and creative process.

Lara’s paintings greet me first. They are everywhere. On the floor, on the walls, propped up against each other, there is a real mix of works in progress and finished pieces. We meet to discuss her new exhibition, Trace Memories, opening at Apocalypse Gallery on Wednesday, and our conversation quickly drifts into the ins and outs of creating. The structure of abstract art, the question of when a painting is truly finished, and the elusive way spaces leave their mark on our being, or leave a trace in our memory. Surrounded by oil paintings about to be exhibited, blue, purple and pink hues dominate the canvases.

“I never sat and made a conscious decision that I like blues or pinks,” she says, looking at them. “In fact, it’s really weird how much pink there is in my work, because when I was younger, I was not a fan of it. I was a bit of a tomboy. More recently, I think of it as quite a feminist thing, actually, embracing my femininity in my work, also because women, especially throughout the history of painting, have been excluded. To be taken seriously, a lot of women have to paint like men. A bit like how, in politics, for women to be taken seriously, they have to behave like men. I think it’s actually quite feminist and freeing to embrace the softness as well.”

Lara’s new pieces exude a kind of dreaminess, an aethereal spirit almost caught in layers of brushstrokes and paint, inspired by physical spaces and the meanings they hold. That is what this exhibition is about – a portrayal of how places become a part of our being, thoughts and memory. The fascination with domestic spaces has always existed for Lara and has been a part of previous solo exhibitions.

“It goes really far back,” she reflects. “It crept up on me. I used to be interested in people within the spaces. Then it evolved into becoming more interested in the spaces themselves without the people. Then I became quite obsessed with catching glimpses of these things through doorways and windows.

“Now, it’s all become a lot more about unspoken stuff that goes on within spaces, so not things I can point out, like the angles of the furniture, but the imprints of these spaces. I think we all exist in them, and they’re full of memories, emotions and experiences. Even things that we’ve forgotten. That’s where the title of the show comes from, Trace Memories, which is the physical reaction that we have inside us, something in our nervous system in response to an experience, and it leaves that trace memory inside us.”

There’s something intimate about watching an artist in her element, surrounded by the very paintings we are discussing. In some, I catch a glimpse of rooms and objects, in others, just a feeling.

Scattered around her studio are hints of her process. Paintbrushes and paint tubes, canvases, pencils and hundreds of little images she collects that might one day be inspiration. “These are all places that I encounter,” she says of the photos. “Whenever a glimpse or a corner of a room speaks to me, I snap a photo.”

How do these fleeting moments and brushstrokes evolve into artworks? Lara gets up from her chair and leads me to a corner where new pieces are taking shape.

“I start with random layers, this is nothing yet,” she says, gesturing to a canvas. “That’s why I work on many paintings at once, adding a little here, a layer there, responding to each moment. If I stay too long on one, I start thinking about it too much, and it loses its magic.”

Her process is deeply intuitive — hard to define, much like the way spaces and emotions linger in memory, the theme her exhibition explores. “I’m intrinsic to the work and the work is intrinsic to me,” she says.

We move around the studio to another painting, where she points out all of the elements that compose it. From afar it appears abstract, well it is, but up close layers of marks, drips and textures emerge, each adding depth and space. All intentional, all instinctive. There is far more structure in abstraction than meets the eye.

Before our conversation ends, there is one more question left circling on my mind. How do you know when a piece is finished?

“Ha! That is the painter’s biggest challenge,” Lara laughs. “It is the slowest part of the process in the life of a painting. Figuring this out takes a really long time and it is hard to explain what happens. At some point, something just clicks where I suddenly see it clearly and I am able to separate myself from it.”

To me, an outsider, it is hard to tell when Lara ends and her paintings begin. Her process flows with such instinctive rhythm that artist and artwork seem inseparable.

As I prepare to leave, she offers a final reflection.

“Art is how I survive everything going on in the world,” she says. “It’s a way of staying in touch with your humanity in a world that feels increasingly dehumanising. Art has always been there through every phase of humanity — and it always will be, because it’s something we all need.”

Trace Memories

Third solo painting exhibition by Lara Sophie Benjamin. October 22-November 8. Apocalypse Gallery, Nicosia. Opening night: 7.30pm. Tuesday-Friday: 11am-1pm, 4pm-7pm. Saturday: 10.30am-1pm. Tel: 22-300150. www.larasophiebenjamin.com, www.apocalypse-gallery.com.cy