Mara van Laaren graduated in 2015 from the Wackers Academy in Amsterdam under the guidance of Sam Drukker. She lives and works in Amsterdam. She finds her subjects in the interiors of old Amsterdam buildings. During her graduation, she worked for half a year in the abandoned Groote Museum of Artis. Van Laaren, who previously studied Architecture for a few years, measures everything in the space, creates floor plans and sketches, which she then processes into a perspective drawing. She uses this as a basis for several paintings of the same subject. The drawing often remains largely visible. In her paintings of often imposing, historical spaces, she seeks silence with her sparsely painted tonal approach. The dizzying precision of perspective combined with the incoming light makes her work mystical.