My work explores how colour, light and form carry traces of experience. Through painting, photography and concept-led projects, I’m interested in how visual and sensory encounters linger - connecting us to places we’ve been, moments we remember, and feelings that surface again over time.
My creative process isn’t linear - it’s layered, fluid and often surprising. I tend to work in series, following threads of curiosity that lead from one body of work to another. Different strands of the practice overlap and inform each other, and this multiplicity - the presence of several creative voices and approaches - sits at the heart of what I do.
Growing up as the daughter of a clock-maker and a dancer, my influences balance precision with freedom. This pairing sparked a lasting curiosity about how we perceive and interpret the world. I’m particularly interested in how colour, light and other sensory cues trigger recollection and feeling.
My practice has grown from vibrant semi-abstract floral paintings to include photography, ceramics, installations and text-based work. Each medium offers a different way of approaching the same underlying questions around perception, identity and lived experience.
Returning to postgraduate study has deepened this enquiry, giving me space to experiment and reflect. It has brought together many strands of my practice through installations, photo books and layered works that reveal unexpected connections between material, memory and meaning.
Across these works, subjects often begin with simple observations - flowers on a table, shifting colours in a landscape, light filtering through leaves. Forms are distilled and colour heightened, allowing the atmosphere of a moment to come to the surface.
BIOGRAPHY
Lara Bowen is a contemporary artist based in Brighton & Hove. Her work is known for vibrant semi-abstract floral compositions and large colour-field paintings that draw on observations of light, place and everyday moments.
Alongside painting, her multidisciplinary practice includes photography, ceramics, installation and mixed media.
Lara studied at Hastings College of Art and Oxford Brookes University, graduating in 1993 with a multidisciplinary BA in Visual Arts and Publishing. She then spent four years in Cyprus teaching art and learning the craft of stained glass before returning to Brighton & Hove to develop her own practice.
In 2000 she founded FOUR-WALLS (now Lara Bowen Contemporary), a gallery she has directed for over twenty-five years. Alongside running the gallery she later completed an Arts Management certificate at the University of Sussex, and continues to work as an independent curator, including projects with No Place Art in 2025 and 2026.
Lara is currently completing a Master’s in Fine Art at the University of Brighton, where her first-year installation The Booth was awarded a Distinction in 2025.
Her work is exhibited regularly at art fairs and galleries across the UK, as well as in her studio and gallery space in Hove. Alongside her studio practice, Lara has spent over two decades working closely with artists and collectors through her gallery, giving her a distinctive perspective on both making and presenting contemporary art.