Creative Director, Designer & Multimedia Fine Artist
Our Story
"GOOD ART IS NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE, BUT WHAT IT DOES TO US."
—Roy Adzak
A lifelong artist and creator, Lara Kellish began formal art training at age seven, studying painting, drawing, and sculpture, with advanced coursework during her teen years at the Huntington School of Fine Arts in New York. What began as a way to transform early life challenges into creative expression soon became a passion for using art to connect with others—intellectually and emotionally.
Lara earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Combined Media from Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art & Planning (AAP) in 2003, with classical training across painting, printmaking, photography, drawing, and sculpture, including six months of study in Rome, Italy. Influenced by artists such as Barbara Kruger and editorial design culture, her work explored the intersection of fine art, consumerism, formal design theory, and visual communication—shaping a career in creative advertising and storytelling for some of the most well known brands in the world.
Today, Lara is an award-winning Creative Director and founder of Lara Design Solutions LLC, a woman-owned creative consultancy based in Wilton, Connecticut. Alongside her professional design practice, she continues her fine art education at the School of Visual Arts and Silvermine Arts Center, where her work centers on experimental monoprinting and contemporary impressionist oil painting—using bold form and expressive color to evoke joy and a sense of freedom.
Recent exhibitions include: Silvermine Art Center 34th Annual Student Exhibition (2024), Ridgefield Guild of Artists 15th Annual Juried Member Exhibition (2025), Carriage Barn Arts Center Juried Art in the Windows (2025), Rowayton Arts Center Juried Photography & Sculpture Show (2025), and Wilton Library 79th Annual Summer Show Art Exhibition (2025).
Alla Prima Painting
Many of Lara's works are created "alla prima" (Italian for "at first attempt,"), meaning that they were completed in a single working session with wet-on-wet oil paint. This technique incorporates spontaneous gestural underdrawings in oil and decisive brushwork to capture the subject with authentic and often emotional results. Colors are selected based on the mood and tone of the intended story, and combined with intentional color theory and temperature to ground the viewer in the scene.
Experimental Printmaking
Lara is formally trained in multiple forms of printmaking, including stone and plate lithography, intaglio (etching), drypoint, aquatint, woodcut, relief, and screen printing. Combining elements of these techniques with painterly expression have produced a collection of bold monoprints, hand-pulled on archival professional printmaking paper.
