Lara Pain is a handweaver and textile artist specialising in site-specific textiles for interiors. QEST funding will help her expand into rug-making and evolve her practice to include further public and community-based projects. She currently works on commissions for interior design studios and individuals, weaving bespoke fabric, throws, and artworks. Her responsive, colour-rich work often explores the found environment, translating textures, rhythms and everyday details into tactile woven forms.
She began her studio practice in 2022 and is hoping to grow to a small team of handweavers, supporting multiple projects and looms running simultaneously. Offering meaningful, paid work experience to students is an important part of Lara’s vision. Establishing her studio has left little time for advancing her formal training, but she feels now is the right to upskill and expand into rugs, seeing the opportunity to explore a tactile medium with narrative potential. QEST will fund intensive courses with Angie Parker Textiles in the UK, and at Vævernes Hus weaving school in Denmark. The latter will lead to a textile residency, where she will apply her newly acquired skills to a new body of work.
