Louise Searle is a Glasgow-based painter who works with oils to produce large-scale canvasses depicting 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
October–November 2023: Scottish Prize for Fine Art, Glasgow Art Club
June-July 2021: Group show, Westbourne Place Studios, Hove
May–December 2019: Mona’s, London
May–June 2018: Group show, Westbourne Place Studios, Hove
Oct 27th–November 4 2016: National Open Art exhibition, Mercer’s Hall, London
May 16th– 29th 2016: Gallery 40, Brighton
May 2014: Group show, Relentless Software, Brighton
May–June 2013: White Rabbit Gallery, Brighton