Coming from a background steeped in creativity, young painter and textile artist Losel Yauch has been making a name for herself in and amongst London’s burgeoning talent scene. Using her Tibetan heritage and love of abstract concepts to inspire her work, she teleports her audience into a parallel universe, forcing them to confront their very own reality. We caught up with Yauch and went behind the scenes to uncover how she brought the Lola to life in her own way.
“London is where I first found my footing as an artist, and in that sense, my identity as an artist feels quite tied to living here.” - Yauch
In the last couple of years I’ve started weaving, using that as a medium to explore my cultural heritage and the occupation of Tibet. My paintings however are less grounded. Rather than a celebration of the strange, odd, and surreal, they’re actually an homage to the quiet perseverance and durability of the mundane in the face of the unbelievable. There’s a poignancy to what we hold onto when faced with our own mortality, and now more than ever I’ve been interested in exploring how life finds a way of trudging on.
I was exhibiting some paintings recently and these two little kids, like four-year-olds, walked by. One of them stopped, pointed at my work, and said to the other, “that’s confusing…but satisfying at the same time”, and then they waddled off. I realized this baby had just summed up everything I strive for in my work. So, though my practice doesn’t stick to one theme or medium, I can only say that I hope you find it confusing and satisfying at the same time.
Playful, garbled stories.
I’m someone who likes to work in bursts. I’ll paint for a couple of days and then abandon it for a while to see how I feel with fresh eyes. I feel like for every hour I spend making work, I spend two hours writing about my practice for exhibitions and residencies. So right now a day in the life is a mix of cooking, painting, and writing.
It’s so difficult to say. My parents used to give me pens and paper to draw If I got antsy as a kid. My grandpa on my dad's side was actually also a painter, so I think I just had the space and support to explore that and other forms of art as a career rather than being pushed into it.
My first thoughts were really about the name Lola. It’s got such personality and I’d say it’s fitting for the bag itself — it’s quite gamine.
I love to look at found photos for inspiration when I’m painting. There is so little context beyond what is in the image and I love that they leave a lot to the imagination so the story and the meaning become the viewers. My favorite images are the ones that logic struggles to make sense of. I had seen an amazing found photo of a horse in the backseat of a Mustang and later realized the pairing was a bit of a thing. A horse in a car felt like such a marriage of modernity and tradition, just like the Lola bag. So for my piece I gave the horse a bit more autonomy and took the man out of the driver’s seat. It’s a fantasyscape with an element of leisure, and it was great that Burberry was interested in taking a playful approach on classic symbols of British identity.
London is where I first found my footing as an artist, and in that sense, my identity as an artist feels quite tied to living here. The past couple of years have been very unpredictable but my genuine hope is that female artists are no longer asked how it feels to be a female artist. I see women in all fields answering the same question, of which their male counterparts are never asked and I think the ideal future is one in which we are so prevalent that our sex is not noteworthy.
I’ve learned a lot about heraldry and symbolism whilst living here and I think that’s been creeping into my work more and more. I also think I’ve learned about more artists from the U.K. who now influence my work a lot like Craigie Aitchison and Alfred Wallis. British Folk Art wasn’t something I was really aware of before moving here and I think most of the work I’ve been really excited to learn about here fits into that category. You can see influences from all of the above in all my recent work, including this piece for Burberry.
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