Some artists arrive through formal study, others by way of slow evolution. For Lola, the path to her studio began not with canvas or brush, but with a plate. A trained chef and former restaurateur, she first honed her aesthetic instincts in the kitchen — where color, composition, texture, and timing come together in a fleeting but complete expression. Her eye for visual harmony, once plated and served, now finds form in resin: luminous, controlled, and richly emotive.

Creativity has always run beneath the surface of Lola’s life, a steady undercurrent even during years spent running her restaurant in an industrial neighborhood near San Francisco. It was there, surrounded by the vibrant artist community of the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard, that something quietly began to shift. She began hosting rotating art exhibitions on the restaurant’s walls. “Instead of taking a commission of sales, the artists would donate a piece,” she remembers. “So we had an eclectic mix of art hanging on the walls.” Simultaneously, she found herself drawn to photographing the world around her, collecting discarded objects, and constructing assemblage pieces from the industrial leftovers she found in her neighborhood. Creativity, in all its forms, had begun to claim more space.

The defining turn came in the Nevada desert. At Burning Man, she and her then-partner built a massive, 64,000-pound fiberglass ice sculpture, her first real encounter with resin — a material that would become central to her practice. “It just seemed natural to me when I started to make all these different assemblage and collage pieces… to coat it all in resin,” she recalls. “Suddenly this thing that was ugly becomes this thing of beauty.” That single discovery catalyzed a new direction.

Soon, her own pieces joined the art on the restaurant’s walls, and the response was immediate. “They were received very well,” she says, “I was totally lit by the experience and by making art.” She decided to sell her restaurant and worked at a birthing university while renting a temporary studio for an Open Studios weekend. And when, as an unknown artist on her first Open Studio, her work sold out, earning $9,000 in a single weekend, she stepped fully into the life of an artist. “I just went for it.”

Over the years, Lola’s work has evolved from its rough-edged, text-heavy beginnings into a clean, strikingly composed practice rooted in intention and emotional honesty. Though the medium remains the same — epoxy resin — it has taken on new sophistication and control. “It’s funny,” she says, “if you saw me, you wouldn’t think that I’m that way. But I think I do have this Type-A personality to some degree. Everything is put in its place. Everything goes exactly where it should go.” Working with resin offers both tension and clarity, demanding technical precision while inviting intuitive flow.

Her palette, too, has shifted. “With this newer body of work, I’m choosing the color before I start the piece,” she says. “Now I want to choose a more subdued palette, choosing my colors by how I’m feeling.” The result is work that hums with quiet resonance—minimalist in form, but emotionally layered. “Some of my most cheerful and uplifting work is made when I might not be having the greatest day…so I guess it’s meditative for me.”

There is an undeniable warmth in her pieces, a kind of internal brightness that mirrors her description of them: “Imagine the sun on your face and how that makes you feel. That’s how I want my work to make people feel.” In her hands, resin becomes more than a medium — it becomes a way of distilling sensation, a means of reflecting not only light but also feeling, memory, and motion.

We are honored to welcome Lola to the Gallery MAR family and delighted to see where her creative momentum will lead. When asked what lights her up in the studio, looking ahead, she answers aptly and poetically, “the unknown…and all of its tremendous possibilities.” In her studio, as in her life, the next chapter begins in that unknown space — alive with color, clarity, and the quiet promise of joy.

 

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Written by Veronica Vale

Tags: Epoxy Resin Art, Lola, Lola Art, Lola Artist, Lola Resin Art, Mixed Media Art, mixed media artist, New Gallery MAR Artist, resin art, San Francisco Art
Posted in Gallery News