Laura Lancaster is a painter who draws inspiration from forgotten and discarded photographs and home movies found in flea markets, charity shops and through ebay. Once precious and significant to someone, they are now detached from their original context and instead they become animated through Lancaster’s luscious, gestural and expressive application of paint. These lost and dislocated souls, caught in the ambiguous space between figuration and abstraction, compel us to reflect on time, memory and loss.
"Laura Lancaster’s paintings are as exuberant as they are melancholic. Working from old family photographs and home movies collected in junk shops and on eBay, she achieves a distinctive expressive resonance. [...] Lancaster is so flamboyant and persuasive a painter that her smears suggest existential shifts and her drips come across as painterly weepings. Nevertheless, she never falls off into sentimentality. Instead, she transforms the typical grins of family snaps into rictus cringes and mask-like grimaces. Just occasionally, there are echoes of James Ensor; you can hardly get a much higher recommendation than that." (Robert Clark, The Guardian, published 23 January 2016)