A conversation with Lola Erhart.
What does your painting process look like? Are there any specific techniques you like to use?
The process for every painting starts with an encounter with the subject, and right there is where the emotional climate of the painting is established. My eye is a natural searcher of beauty, not in an aesthetic sense, but in a humanistic sense. When painting portraits, I make use of the natural empathy within me, and all of us, that I feel the need to put in motion in some way. This is my way of understanding the world, other humans and the complexities of the emotional relations that connect us. I try to see through the veils. With all this, I then go to the studio and start painting. Usually, I make a few paintings quickly and at the same time to avoid overthinking and overdoing. I try to keep the brushstroke fresh and the energy flowing so whenever I feel stuck, I move on to another painting. I paint in the mornings with my mind rested and the right amount of energy to face the canvas.
Who are your subjects? What draws you to them?
My subjects are friends of mine, with whom I’ve been working for over 3 years now. The painter/model relationship is evolving, and I think this is interesting, since they feel each time more comfortable in this role and this allows me to portray them in a more honest way.
Your work walks the line between realism and abstraction— how did you arrive at this style?
I’ve always been drawn to the human figure, but realism sometimes feels limiting to me when it comes to exploring the visual language, gesture, color, emotionality. I have a bit of a conflict there; I find interesting to work with, since conflict is essential and permanent in painting. Realism feels suffocating, but also attracts and seduces me in a egocentric way. Abstraction just wants to destroy that attempt of the ego, its rebellious, unpredictable and difficult to master. I love the coexistence of both in my painting and the challenges they present, I feel that I have a long way to go on trying to make them work together. And its so much fun.
Who are some artists that inspire you?
Right now Lucian Freud and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye are blowing my mind, but also so many contemporary figurative painters are doing it so well is amazing and inspiring , Tim Benson, Mark Tennant, Jenna Gribbon, Michael Borremans, Sung Jik Yang, Emilio Villalba, Alex Kanevsky, Ruprecht von Kaufmann, Iñigo Navarro Davila and many more.
How do you see your artistic practice evolving in the future?
I want it to get deeper in the search for expressing human essence, which is what I see in Lucian Freud and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paintings; they do it in such an honest way that it just transcends the aesthetics. The opportunity to connect with human vulnerability through a painting, and manifest the beauty in this vulnerability that makes us all equal, is like a balm to the heart.