For more than a decade, the British-Canadian artist Lorena Lohr has been travelling the American Southwest by bus and train, documenting the fleeting landscapes and the distinct character of the region’s built environment. Lohr’s work takes in a variety of artistic disciplines. As a photographer, she captures everything from motels and bars to parking lots and patches of waste ground, focusing on unexpected and often uncanny aspects of the commonplace and mundane in the places she visits without ironic detachment or comment.
Your work is heavily inspired by your travels through the American Southwest, what initially drew you to this area, and what keeps pulling you back?
I fell into traveling the area by chance really. In 2010 I started riding on the Greyhound bus with an ex of mine - Greyhound used to have month-long passes which allowed you to get off and on wherever you wanted, since discontinued because they were so easy to forge. On these trips I started photographing everything along the way, initially with the intention of simply making a record of where I’d been. But one day, when I saw the desert in Arizona for the first time - at dawn, in that highly specific pink half-light - I got the sense that everything I would do from there onwards would come from the desert and its small towns. Not only did I get a sense of obligation to photographically document towns in the desert that are for the most part overlooked, but also I had the idea to create a devotional painting to the landscape, which eventually resulted in my ongoing painting series, Desert Nudes. I’ve never lost that draw to the desert that I got on that day, and I’ve travelled around it whenever I’ve had the chance. I’m there as we speak, in Far West Texas…
Lot 167. Lorena Lohr, Desert Nude at Night III, 2026, Oil and acrylic on plywood panel, 12.2 x 12.2 cm (5 x 5 in)
You reference Northern Renaissance painters who imagined deserts they had never seen. What fascinates you about those second-hand, fantastical landscapes?
I'm mainly struck by the way those painters depicted vast mountain ranges receding far back into the distance, and also by how all the rock formations they painted were so sweeping and curving and didn’t look European at all but appeared like the mesas and mountain ranges you see in the American desert. So I decided to do my best at filling in a gap in painting history I guess, and to make my own kind of paintings that explored a part of the world that these painters weren’t able to get to yet.
The female figures in your ‘Desert Nudes’ series are imagined rather than mythological. What role do they play within the landscape?
In the Northern Renaissance landscape paintings I was inspired by the most, paintings by Breughel or Cranach or Joachim Patinir amongst others, you have female figures, even nude ones but none that aren’t tied to mythological or religious narratives. So as well as painting the American Southwest I wanted to present a female nude that was simply in harmony with the landscape, as opposed to being part of a larger dramatic narrative. I liked the idea of catching the nude mid-gesture, but in a very relaxed way. So there’s nothing really remarkable going on here but I am exploring what it would be like to be just at ease with the landscape or a built environment like a motel or bar room in a way that is not entirely possible in everyday life - more and more so these days where everything is so uncertain and no one’s feeling easy.
Works from Lorena Lohr's "Motel Nudes" series
Can you talk about the ideas & themes behind the piece ‘Desert Nude at Night III’ you’ve created for the International Women’s day Auction?
Everything I do is part of one expanding series, so all I’ve mentioned so far applies here.
The theme of this International Women’s Day accelerate action campaign is ‘Give to Gain,’ encouraging a mindset of generosity and collaboration – can you talk about how and if this resonates with you?
Well, I really believe everything comes from a dialogue between people, you can’t really do anything truly in isolation. And forgetting that is obviously where a lot of problems are coming from at this point in time…
Do you have any projects on the horizon that you would like to share?
I’m making a new photography book in the Southwest currently, as well as a new painting book of my miniature paintings, called Motel Nudes. And glad to say I have several painting shows coming up too.
Visit Lorena's Website
Questions by Kate Reeve-Edwards
Banner Image Credit: Rebecca Fourteau for Le Monde Béryl
