Lauren Portada

Through her vibrant, large-scale paintings, Lauren Portada creates challenging abstractions of nature and the environment. Inspired by sea explorers as well as her experience touring the arctic, she creates a relationship between the physical and environmental nature of painting. Her work, rooted in abstraction and color, contemplates colored paint’s relationship to the physical canvas, stressing the marriage of the two and the textured effects they produce together. Portada’s work is a direct result of her view of the world around her, and her need to articulate her observations. Through a study of expansive landscapes, horizons, voids, and icebergs, Portada hopes to discover how light influences space and shape in an environment which characteristically lacks color variation and thrives off of reflection. Portada hopes that viewers can engage with her work on her work’s terms, submitting to the evolving impacts of lighting, environment, time and current societal conditions.

A member and cofounder of REGINA REX Gallery in New York, Portada works to help curate future shows and contributes her own pieces. Portada is also represented by The Pit in Los Angeles.