Lara Felsing is an interdisciplinary Cree Métis artist from Northern Alberta, Canada. Her practice explores kinship to the natural world and advocates for the necessity of living in reciprocity with the land and all living beings. Traditional plant harvesting is at the core of her practice, and Lara gathers roots, leaves, berries, petals, and pine needles to create compostable paintings, weavings, clothing and blankets that speak to the necessity of honouring and showing gratitude for Mother Earth's gifts. Her material practice and research are approached with 'two-eyed seeing,' with one eye looking through a lens of Indigenous teachings and the other through a lens of Western knowledge.
Lara has exhibited internationally and attended residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. She is a Helen Lefeaux School of Fashion Design graduate and has an MFA from the Emily Carr University of Art & Design. Lara received the Renée Van Halm + Pietro Widmer Graduation Award for Visual Arts and is also the recipient of the Indigenous Scholars Award; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Government of Canada; the Peter deMarsh Memorial Bursary, Canadian Federation of Forest Owners; and the Yaxkasei (William Callaghan) Memorial Award, Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
