Lara Lozano

Ask about the canvases stacked against the wall and Lara will call them practice, then steer the conversation to somebody else's work. They are not practice. Forty-four years old and a teacher by trade, she has the kind of hand that catches a likeness in three strokes and will still insist the nose is wrong. The same deflection runs everywhere: she plays down how well she reads a room, how quickly she knows what someone wants before they say it, how she wears that cheerleader outfit like a dare she pretends not to have made. What she genuinely prefers is being told, clearly, what to do next. Talking to Lara feels like coaxing something out of someone who wanted you to ask twice.