CLARA-LANE LENS
Name: Clara-Lane Lens
Age: 25
Birthplace: Brussels, Belgium
Home: Berlin, Germany
Discipline: Painting
A Reminder To Forget, 2022
What’s usually the starting point of your practice, and when does your work feel complete?
Having a coffee, going to the studio, having another coffee, selecting a photo I took and trying out what it looks like on the canvas. The work starts to feel complete when I get the feeling there’s nothing more to add which would improve the painting.
What are you obsessed with?
I’m obsessed with rediscovering certain people through constantly renewed details, like the way they walk, move, speak, or interact. In the same way, I continuously re-watch ’90s sitcoms and cheeky TV series to rediscover different character traits within one specific person.
What are the interactions that you seek between your work and the viewer?
I don’t purposely seek interactions between my work and the viewers. The images I create are very intimate and personal to me, as if I took a little part of the subjects with me and translated them onto the canvas. If people happen to feel some sort of connection – in any form – towards them, in a way, that fulfils me.
What is your commitment, both artistically and personally?
If you mean to ask what my purpose is, or what I !nd to be worth living for, I would say people.
Who are some of the artists that have been the biggest influence
on you?
Elizabeth Peyton, Marlene Dumas, Peter Hujar, Claire Tabouret, Alice Neel, Jean-Léon Gérôme.
Where is the beauty for you today?
In empathy, as it is the best tool for us humans to connect. If there is no connection to others, what is it we are here for anyway?
Oh, and in a perfectly executed oat milk cappuccino. Not only are they beautiful, but they’re rare, very rare.