Beyond the beauty and complexity of colour and form in my flowers, there is a connection to memory. For me they evoke the feeling of place where I discovered them and the people I was with.
I particularly like painting compositions with more than one focal point as the viewer experiences a series of discoveries within the painting. This experience becomes a meditation of beauty and variation. Similarly, I combine techniques of realism, complex compositions and modernism so that even compositions with a singular flower prompt the viewer to explore their intricacies.
Milton Glasser spoke about the function of art as being something that people can have in common. I think that ‘something’ is more than an appreciation or object, but also an experience, a bit like all of us seeing a shooting star.
And as much as I attach my memories to the works I create, the viewers and purchasers attach and discover their own. So we are connected, without having met.

Claire Lai has almost always lived in Southeast Queensland. The diverse environments of inner city, rainforest, rural and coastal have been a source of finding detail and wonder in the natural and suggestions of narrative and identity within the urban. With qualifications in science, literature and graphic design, close observation has been a preoccupation and pleasure throughout her life. Expressing this through her life-long obsession with art and colour ties her many different interests together. She works mainly in oil paint and soft pastels and her current themes are florals, still-life, portraits, figurative and interiors.

 Claire utilises techniques of modernism, realism, and graphic design to capture the beauty and detail in transitory subjects. Sharing an individual observation of details or narrative, in conversation with the viewer, celebrates our connection to the universal.

Claire Lai began exhibiting, receiving commissions, and selling her work within Australia in 2020. She was a highly commended finalist in the 2024 Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Awards and the 2024 Ipswich Art Awards art awards and has begun participating in group shows.