Painting-Performance & Talk with Lara Quinn

Painting-Performance & Talk with Lara Quinn

Saturday July 29th, 12:30pm – 1:30pm

Marking the final day of her residency at Uillinn, Quinn invites viewers into the slow unfolding of a large-scale abstract painting, transforming the painting process from a solitary practice into a shared, sensory experience. Working on canvas larger than the human body, Quinn uses scale to simulate the immersive experience generated in the act of painting. The concentric circles she paints recall the growth of a tree’s rings, where the layers form a material record of time. Quinn is interested in the way memory might similarly accumulate through painting, with each piece becoming a living archive coloured by its past. The muted yet luminous palette evokes memories of childhood and the sensory register that exists before language. Through performance, the work shifts focus from the finished image towards the embodied experience of making, where duration, movement, and colour become central to the encounter.

Quinn is a Cork-based visual artist and recipient of the Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre and Cork County Council Residency Award 2026. With prior education studying the History of Art at University College Cork, Quinn holds a BA First-Class Honours Degree in Fine Art from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design (2024). Working across painting and performance, Quinn examines identity through the interplay of memory, imagination and lived experience. The self-portrait serves as a site of enquiry throughout, anchoring the work alongside an increasing engagement with abstraction and colour.