Louise Searle is a Glasgow-based painter who works with oils to produce large-scale canvasses that depict atmospheric environments which are often devoid of people.
Creating dynamic compositions, Louise’s paintings eschew the figurative, yet often hint at human presence. Scenes sometimes register human activity, or evoke the feeling that someone has just left the scene. At other times, inanimate objects take on an anthropomorphic quality.
Louise works from her own observational photographs. Part instinctual, part compositional, these photographs become source material for paintings in which photography’s realism is interpreted through the medium of oils, lending vibrancy of colour and depth of stroke.
Louise continues to return to her early interests in the translation of light onto canvas and naturally occurring abstraction. In her most recent paintings, she focuses on the interplay of form and repetition in subjects that she has come across through chance encounters. Across all of Louise’s work, narratives register ambiguously, purposely leaving the work open to multiple interpretations and possible meanings.
Louise holds a BA in Fine Art Painting from Brighton University (1997) and has exhibited her paintings widely. In 2023, she was nominated for the Scottish Prize for Fine Art. Her work is held in various private collections.
Exhibitions:
June-July 2021, Group show, Westbourne Place Studios, Hove.
May- December 2019 Mona's, Tottenham, N17 9TA.
May-June 2018 Group show, Westbourne Place Studios, Hove.
Oct 27th – November 4 2016 National Open Art exhibition, Mercer's Hall, Ironmonger Lane,
London EC2V 8HE.
May 16th – 29th 2016 Gallery 40, 40 Gloucester Road, Brighton.
May 2014 Group show, Relentless Software, Air Street, Brighton.
May/June 2013 White Rabbit Gallery, 88 Gloucester Road, Brighton.
Biography
1991-1993 BTEC General art and design, Stafford College
1993-1997 BA (hons) Fine art painting, University of Brighton
Louise lives and works in Glasgow.