Lara Meintjes

Lara Meintjes is a painter compelled to transform everyday subjects into painterly conversations in a vibrant, exuberant and joyful manner. Her floral works play with perspective in the spirit of the Fauvist painters; manipulating space through the use of elongated or flattened forms. Colour is used to define space and to communicate ideas in a distinctly maximalist fashion, where meaning resides in the instability of forms and the artistic process of creation itself.

Meintjes is a self-taught painter born in South Africa who currently lives in California where she is studying environmental anthropology with a focus on the ways in which culture, history and colonialism affect human engagement with place. Relationships, interactions, conversations, agreements and contracts are implied in her works through a focus on the objects people create. She considers these objects as avatars, using them to examine the relationship between humans and the natural world. Classical Greek urns, proteas, floral patterns and tigers frequently appear in her images. She favours the vibrancy and velvety quality of gouche paints, crayons, oil sticks and markers to execute her ideas.

Meintjes describes herself as someone compelled to paint. Her work has been shown in museums, homes, coffee shops and galleries all over the world.

SELECTED PROJECTS & EXHIBITIONS

2018 – Wide Eyes Open Palms (WEOP) (solo), Long Beach, CA, USA. 2017 – Viento y Agua, (solo) Long Beach, CA, USA; From Within, Art eXchange, Long Beach, CA, USA. 2016 – Lucky You, MoLAA (The Museum of Latin American Art), Long Beach, CA, USA. 2015 - Viento y Agua, Long Beach, CA, USA; Wolves, Johannesburg, South Africa; (Works inspired by Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) with Fremont Drama Club (solo), Woodrow Wilson High School, Long Beach, CA, USA. 2014 - Relative Aperture, Greenly Art Space, Signal Hill, CA, USA; The Enormous Tiny Art Show, Nahcotta, Portsmouth, NH; Band of Outsiders, Balconi, Los Angeles, CA, USA; FridaMania, MoLAA, Long Beach, CA, USA; From Her, Pico House Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. 2013 - Viento Y Agua, Long Beach, CA, USA; Gatov Gallery, Long Beach, CA, USA; The Illustrated World, Mixt Media Arts, Long Beach, CA. 2012 - From a Lump of Clay, ArtX, Long Beach, CA; The Enormous Tiny Art Show, Nahcotta, Portsmouth, NH; ArtX, Portraiture, Long Beach, CA.