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Interview with an impressionist painter Lea Laboy

Updated: Sep 16

Lea Laboy is the author of publications on painting and philosophy, her oil paintings have

been published in Artists & Illustrators, Leisure Painter. She is also the author of a postage stamp design, Exlibris and a creator of miniature books, who presented her works at exhibitions in Venice, Miami, New York, Paris, Switzerland, Florence, Dubai, Greece. In the coming months, her works will be displayed in Galleries in Venice, Berlin and Greece, and in October at an exhibition of a collective of artists from around the world in Milan at Piazza San Carlo in front of the Basilica of San Carlo. The above exhibitions shall be accompanied by the "Flowers" catalogue.


Lea Laboy
Lea Laboy

The painter's palette is a witness to the painter's work. What does your palette say about you as a painter?


My palette is certainly a record of my search for color and the right shade. It is a process that lasts for hours, weeks, even months, although not years yet. In some places you can see a free, broad mixing with a brush, in others it is just a delicate brushstroke transferring small portions of color to the cardboard. In general, my palette is very ascetic, only basic colors, always without black and currently with an attempt to eliminate white. I have my vision of color uniformity in the painting and I am working towards it.


Rosebuds, oil
Rosebuds, oil

From your statement I conclude that color is an extremely important element of the image for you or do you perceive the image through color?


A painting is always a "set" of elements that create it and color is one of them. I can't simply say that, for example, I like this painting because it has a good color scheme... but I don't like it because the proportions were not maintained. The painter's task is to master all these elements because if one element "limps" the image is always difficult to perceive visually, and it will always follow him like a shadow. It is like building, you can't build a castle on sand because no matter how beautiful it is, it has a flaw, it has no solid foundations.


"Flowers" catalogue

How important is composition in your paintings?


Composition is the starting point in my work. Before a painting is created, several to several dozen sketches appear. Of course, the starting point, as for every painter, is the golden ratio, whose proportion ratio is 1.6180 phi based on the Fibonacci sequence, although the final choice is always intuitive.



Moring in the Forest, oil
Moring in the Forest, oil


Is there a painter whose work you particularly dislike, if so who is it and why?


I have consistently disliked Vincent van Gogh's paintings since my studies. I think that this

was influenced primarily by the way he treated color and that he used thick strokes of paint and also had a preference for the color yellow, which I dislike and which he associated with the sun, life force and god, which in my opinion was his private interpretation because as we know from the history of art that yellow has been associated with betrayal and fraud since the 12th century, an example of which is the representation of the figure of Judas dressed in a yellow cloak in the painting.


The Soul of The Rose, oil
The Soul of The Rose, oil

Do you have clearly defined creative assumptions or is there anything that limits you as a painter?


I think that the people who bother me the most are the ones who are bothered by the fact that I constantly want to develop artistically, gain knowledge in various fields, constantly learn. This is a current trend that promotes "self-taught people" in everything who "know everything because they derive from their own interior", but no one realizes that they will not draw water from an empty well if there is no water in it beforehand. Most people think that if someone has more than one diploma, it is snobbery, which I find strange because my father, who was a scientist, always told me that a person must learn throughout life, learn everything and from everyone because you never know what may be useful in life or even save it. My father, a history enthusiast, always gave me an example of people who survived World War II in a German death camp only because they knew how to play instruments because the Germans were organizing a show and needed musicians. My motto is simple, if you can learn from a shoemaker how to repair shoes, you will not hesitate and do it. If you can learn to give injections from a nurse, don't hesitate and do it. Don't be afraid of physical work, it is not a disgrace, lack of knowledge is not a reason for shame, but a reason for shame is when you can learn but you reject it and stigmatize those who want to do it.


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