As with people, every city has a unique essence. Few cities contain the aesthetic power and beauty of Paris. To view a painting by Claude Lazar is to see the soul of Paris. Not the clean "postcard" Paris of many of today's artists. Lazar's paintings are far more complex. They have a timeless quality. Their weathered interiors, with rusty old mirrors and scratched walls evoke images of generations of people who were born, lived and died within them. All of these paintings are poignantly empty, yet the presence of each room's inhabitants is all the more real for their absence. Every encounter with a Lazar painting is a new experience, a new opportunity for the viewer to invest themselves in those deserted spaces. These are not static images, or rather, their static exterior reveals a powerful underlying dynamism. Like all truly great artwork, these paintings have a life of their own.

Lazar's use of light, as well, is extraordinary. He begins each work by painting the canvas black, then working from dark colors to lighter ones. This age-old technique results in a luminosity that seems to emanate from within the canvas itself, almost as though someone were shining a light through it from behind. Prior to devoting his life to painting, Claude Lazar was a cinematographer, so it is no accident that his paintings often convey the sense of a film set waiting for the actors to appear:

...In a dimly lit cafe, a banquette of faded red leather sits in front of a window looking out on a rainy Parisian street. A dirty ashtray and a stained, not-quite-empty wine glass are placed on the worn table. The raindrops are so alive one expects to see them dribble down the cracked window. A faint light emanates from a street lamp on the corner outside. Who just stood up, leaving the slight indentation on the seat and the almost imperceptible trace of lipstick on the glass? Did someone meet her here? Is she coming back? Did she leave alone?

This is just one of the endlessly compelling scenes one finds in Lazar's artwork. Whether a rendition of the exterior of a decaying warehouse building, a reflection of a room through an old, dilapidated mirror, or the interior of a warm yet worn French country kitchen, each Lazar canvas carries with it the indelible mark of an artist who truly knows and reveres his subject matter, not in spite of, but because of it's flaws. This is an artist who sees the beautiful in the everyday, who illustrates the profound in the simple, and who is not afraid to show the dark as well as the light.

Artist's Statement: "A man does not choose to become an artist, he is compelled to be one: there is no alternative. And what he creates is not simply a painting on canvas, for art enables us to understand the heart of a civilization. His responsibility is great because it is through art that subsequent generations will attempt to understand ours. This is the true legacy of an artist. If through my work, I manage to carry on just a tiny part of this heritage, then I will consider my life a success."