The British Canadian artist Lorena Lohr works across both photography and painting. Her documentary photographic work often captures and depicts her specific take on Americana; from gloriously pastel tinged landscapes and buildings to retro motel signage or snapshots of characterful vintage looking interiors. She has published 10 limited edition artist books while also shooting accessories stories for fashion brands, such as Versace or magazines, including AnOther and Pop. Lohr’s paintings of female figures reclining in motel rooms or against desert landscapes, often in a variety of striking footwear, have gained much traction from the art world since she began the ongoing ’Desert Nudes’ series in 2014. This year, Lohr’s paintings will be featured in at least 6 art shows - four new miniature signature circular porthole-style works are currently on show at London’s Soho Revue, until Feb 28. The artist is also working on a new painting book of her ‘Motel Nudes’ series alongside a new photography book which continues to explore the American Southwest. 

Lorena Lohr captured the Le Monde Béryl Kim Sion exclusive capsule collection in New York, 2025.

1. How would you explain your rituals, process and practice? 

I draw and paint almost entirely from my head, depicting figures in a combination of remembered and imagined rooms and landscapes. You could say that the process itself is quite ritualistic in that it’s always about just sitting down and seeing what comes out on the page or panel. The subject matter of the paintings comes from places I’ve travelled though - mainly whilst making my ongoing photo series through America since 2010 - so painting acts as a way of communing with memory and the present time both at once, and joining them together.

It’s crucial to me that a painting forms totally instinctively and in a way that’s accepting of chance or mistakes - I paint in layers and each one brings out more unexpected detail, so the final piece ends up like a kind of palimpsest. So the magical quality of doing these is in part that the end result is always unknowable and reveals something new to me that I didn’t know was there before. Its the same thing with photographing, you set out to do something but expect the project to completely change in the process, and try to take in as much as possible along the way…

2. Do you have an early memory that you think connects to your creative path now? 

I have family down in Florida, and I remember being a kid and going to my cousin’s place in Orlando for the first time which had a real effect on me. It was entirely peach in her bedroom and she had a waterbed and was married to a hot tub salesman. I think that was where I got a lot of my taste from, and sparked the way I look at how people bring in touches of the exotic or symbols of escapism into everyday life in both my photographs and paintings.

3. Whose work has been the biggest influence on you to date? 

I think honestly if we’re talking about the amount of time spent being influenced by someone I’d go with both Hieronymus Bosch and The Cramps - both are their own worlds.

 4. Is there something you’re working at the moment that you’re excited about and what can you say about it? 

My paintings started off small and then I went even smaller, using the round miniature portal format used in Victorian love-tokens. But over the last few months I’ve started a very large painting, five and a half feet across. It’s really a trip after working so small for so long, a completely different experience mainly because it’s more physical, less in the head. I swore I’d never make a big piece but I’m not so sure about that now - I think it can be interesting to transform something you’d not normally go for into something that feels right, or even to start off from a point of discomfort. I’m also making a new photo book.

5. How would you define beauty? 

I really don’t think that’s for me to say, and the point of beauty is it’s ineffable and can’t be defined in any straightforward sense. But being in the desert to me is always something, that’s really where I draw all of my work from.