Artwork
Lauren Velvick
Portrait of Laura and Rachel Lancaster. Courtesy Office UK.
Painters Laura and Rachel Lancaster are twins, however their work is something however equivalent. Laura’s is energetic, with oil paint thickly utilized to pick figures in landscapes. In the meantime, Rachel depicts moments of stillness and intimacy in gentle shades. They paint in parallel, from the identical studio in Newcastle, England, every along with her personal tackle the nuances of reminiscence in our image-dominated tradition.
I met Laura and Rachel of their shared studio within the leafy Ouseburn space of Newcastle, simply outdoors of the town middle, amid galleries, boutiques, bars, and eating places. They’ve been primarily based collectively on this Grade II-listed transformed flax mill for over a decade, a part of a studio group that homes creatives over three flooring, with a gallery open to the road. Both aspect of their massive, shiny house is strewn with paint, palettes, and partially labored canvases.
The 2 painters’ works are at present on view within the exhibition “Keep in mind, Someplace” at Baltic, Gateshead, one of many North of England’s main modern artwork establishments. They have been born close by in Hartlepool, and each studied superb artwork at Northumbria College, graduating in 2001. The pair contemplate this exhibition to be one thing of a homecoming. It’s poignant, the sisters defined, to be exhibiting work collectively in a public gallery for the primary time, right here within the North East of England, after every has been on a whirlwind tour exhibiting all throughout the globe.
Set up view of Laura Lancaster, Lengthy Time Listener (2025) in “Keep in mind, Someplace” on the Baltic, 2025. Courtesy of the Baltic.
Painter sisters, totally different kinds
On Baltic’s third ground gallery, the exhibition opens with Notes Lie Lengthy (2025), a large-scale work by Rachel, which faces the doorway. Sunflower yellow overtakes the viewer’s sight view on this intently cropped picture of a determine seemingly mendacity flat on their entrance. Their yellow, knitted cardigan is depicted in deeply textured element. The work makes a right away emotional affect, nevertheless it’s not clear what narrative it conveys.
Within the studio, Rachel defined that fairly than arising with a narrative, she as a substitute “units a sense or intention” for every portray, earlier than permitting it to develop slowly in phases by way of a collection of washes and erasures.
This gauzy impact, making a stillness within the portray’s composition, is in sharp distinction to her sister’s work. To the left of the gallery entrance at Baltic, Laura’s Lengthy Time Listener (2025) makes use of thickly utilized brush strokes to evoke frenetic motion. Drips of paint seem on the entrance and sides of the canvas, splashed diagonally as if thrown. A determine perches in a tree in opposition to a pale sky, clearly recognisable as an individual, however disintegrating right into a flurry of particular person marks on nearer inspection. “I’m within the level at which a picture falls aside,” Laura mentioned, commenting on her acutely aware option to depict human faces with “the identical quantity of element as a leaf or a rock.”
Portrait of Laura Lancaster. Picture by Kuba Ryniewicz. Courtesy the artist and Office U.Ok.
Discovering their very own fashion
All through “Keep in mind, Someplace,” Laura’s works, typically in a palette of wealthy blues, greens, and browns, with flashes of pinks and oranges, tempt the viewer in the direction of recognition, although it’s typically out of attain. For instance, the minimize of a garment or a hair fashion might sound to position the scene in a specific place or time, however by no means clearly. In Out of Nowhere (2025), a bunch of ladies lounge in a lush forest, carrying what appears to be like like fashionable swimwear however with voluminous coiffed hairstyles skillfully picked out with a number of brushstrokes. However, Rachel’s works are rather more comforting, although in addition they have unsettling components. She makes use of a gentle pastel and ethereal neon palette, corresponding to in Nearer (2025), the place a baby’s flyaway hair is seen as if by way of half-closed eyes.
Each sisters create a way of ambiguity, although they use totally different strategies and processes. Particularly, the artists differ of their use of supply materials drawn from the detritus of Twentieth- and Twenty first-century media. Laura typically discovers photographic slides in flea markets to make use of as supply materials. She interprets these in any other case unseen pictures into work comparatively rapidly, she advised me, in “three classes; underpainting in acrylic after which discovering the marks, that are by no means everlasting.” Within the studio, on Laura’s aspect, a big canvas is propped up with this acrylic underpainting seen, the place terracotta orange marks sketch out the location of figures in a panorama.
Rachel as a substitute bases her work on stills from digital media and on-line. The moments that she selects evoke closeness and tenderness and are cropped in order that the picture appears to envelop the viewer. It’s a method that enables her to cross cultural boundaries. Discussing her current exhibition, “From One other Room,” at The Shophouse, Hong Kong, Rachel famous how drawing from international digital media meant that Asian viewers might faucet into the identical acquainted concepts as viewers from Newcastle. Equally, Laura’s landscapes appear recognizable however could possibly be anyplace, and you’ll think about viewers at her current exhibitions in South Korea, Los Angeles, and New York feeling the identical.
A serious second
Lots of the works on present in “Keep in mind, Someplace” are newly commissioned for the exhibition, and the artists defined that they wished to make sure that their work was proven at a comparable “quantity,” each by way of the quantity of work on present and the way they command house. As equivalent twin sisters each working in oils however in very other ways, this meant contemplating how their modes of portray will be learn collectively. Whereas Laura has now labored on bigger canvases for a number of years, for Rachel, the exhibition provided a problem to upscale, creating works which can be, as she put it, “simply paint” when seen intently, however resolve at a distance.
Portrait of Rachel Lancaster. Picture by Kuba Ryniewicz. Courtesy of Office.
Sitting within the middle of the studio the place they’ve labored in parallel for over a decade, the variations of their strategies are conspicuous. For instance, Rachel’s palette is piled excessive with solely two colours in all their gradients, adorned with a fabric that I study is used to wipe again layers of glaze to disclose the pale canvas beneath. Whereas on Laura’s aspect, tins of blended paint totter in piles throughout. Brushes and spatulas are wedged haphazardly into jars.
Each artists agree that after they graduated from Northumbria College in 2001, portray was, as Rachel put it, “not a modern artform to pursue, not to mention figurative portray.” After 20 years, the Lancasters’ work has turn out to be extra on-trend, and much more compelling, inside our image-saturated tradition and economic system of consideration. Each artists focus the viewer’s gaze, forcing us to pause. They intensify the tactility of their painted surfaces in distinction to a picture on display screen, although every with totally different ends. For Laura, it’s necessary that “the paint will be itself” for Rachel, it’s concerning the act of viewing creating “an excuse to really feel and let the self be delicate.” They every titillate the viewer, prompting curiosity to know who’s depicted and what they’re doing. But every presents this as a query, asking us to be comfy in uncertainty.
