Pensive Theater

The continuous eruptions of violence as well as the human and environmental tragedies that define our current time are the catalysts for my art making. Creating paintings and collages made of images taken from the news, mass media and personal photography, I create fantastical dramas that respond to the human condition. I fuse traditional narratives and symbols with highly rendered tangible objects and elements of abstraction. Urban architecture, anatomical parts and areas of nonobjective texture are as crucial to the unfolding stories as the figurative characters.

Bombarded daily with images of local and global atrocities, I am intrigued by issues of the loss of and desire for faith within a continuously alienating culture. Uncovering the divine from within the rubble of human disaster is an attempt to restore the broken self to a state of grace. Within each tableau, nature and the individual are collectively defeated, showing that our individual experiences merely mirror that of our abused environment. Reconciliation of the self would mean the reconciliation of humankind with nature.

My work examines the relationships between the loss of environmental and human compassion and the loss of self. Each reflects and amplifies the other, creating a universe in which one state cannot be reconciled with the others. The processes must be simultaneous. In revealing these connections, my work strives to challenge the viewer to consider how and when faith, compassion and awareness will come to us, resulting in an environment far different from the one we inhabit now.

Lara Hill

Lara Hill was born in New York City. She received her BFA in painting from Parsons School of Design and her MFA in painting from The University of the Arts. In 2005 she received a SURDNA artist fellowship. Her work has been shown in galleries in NYC, Philadelphia and other cities in the United States. She lives, paints and teaches visual art in Brooklyn, New York.