Francisco Centofanti and Lara Smith

Francisco Centofanti’s story is one of romance. First seeing Cezanne’s work in Aix en Provence as a 14 year old boy; this fertile seed began a 20 year plus career; seeing him graduate from the Florence Academy of Art, Italy; and becoming a highly collected and exhibited artist. His work has now been exhibited extensively (including the Saatchi Gallery) and is collected by clients in New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tokyo, Paris, Stockholm, Florence and London.

His many international collectors include the art dealer Martin Summers, financier Mark Lapidus, writer Nigel Hinton, Don Foster MP and The Who’s frontman, Roger Daltrey CBE. “Francisco Centofanti is a fabulous artist. I particularly love his landscape paintings – he captures light and colours brilliantly.” Roger Daltrey CBE

Some of Centofanti’s pieces may seem ominous and brooding to the viewer; and here he becomes a master of layering meaning and feeling: “I work outside a lot, sketching and painting from life, so direct contact study of Nature is usually my starting place, trying to capture a light effect or a colour combination,” he says. “Sometimes the smaller paintings are finished on location and they carry an immediacy and direct response to the subject.

Working En Plein Air is Lara Smith’s favourite approach: “I feel I see things that I wouldn’t necessarily spot if I were just painting from a photo,” she explains. “Certain details in a landscape or colours particularly pop when you are immersed in the landscape; allowing me to capture not just how it looks, but how it feels. If I’m painting a stormy sea, for example, being physically present means I can respond to the energy of the waves and the movement of the air as it happens”.

Smith describes her work as expressive, and there’s a strong emotional energy behind the way she paints. “My process tends to be fast and instinctive, often driven by impulse and guided by how I’m feeling in the moment,” she says. “When I’m painting, I enter a flow state where everything else falls away. At times, it feels as though the work pours out of me, capturing raw emotion and movement”.

Meryl Cubley April 2025