Louisa Crispin

Entranced by the cycle of growth and decay, Louisa focuses on drawing nature and exploring the properties of graphite, with an interest in gently educating people to look closer and appreciate the natural world. It’s quiet in the studio as she captures the details: texture, shadows, silhouettes and movement created with marks and tone, it’s rarely about the colour.

“Meditative close study brings questions and I find a growing need to speak out to change entrenched habitual attitudes in a way that reaches a wider audience. Since 2017 my work has been related to Nature Corridors and the barriers of fragmented and isolated insect populations, through our relationship to the European Wasp, an insect actively disliked but important to a healthy environment.”

While this narrative is the foundation of her work, She is equally excited by the materiality and technical process of drawing. Graphite is such a tactile material which needs to be seen to be fully appreciated. There are subtle nuances of colour and texture as the surface is burnished to an almost mirror shine or applied gently as silk, a soft smoky sheen. Hidden marks create layers, a history, and trick the eye with connections to real objects, ancient landscapes or city skylines despite the two dimensional plane.

Escaping the box, compact concertina sculptures have focused her attention on the barriers to nature as she catches glimpses of insects between the folds and struggles to find empty space to draw a wasp within the random marks. As these pieces grow they take on a life of their own, forming sinuous, volcanic mounds until restricted or concealed. Their connections are a growing storyline.

Louisa is a member of the Free Painters and Sculptors, the Wilderness Art Collective and the Society of Graphic Fine Art and is a Fellow of the Society of Botanical Artists. She exhibits through selected Galleries and her prizewinning drawings are held in private collections internationally.

Website: www.louisacrispinart.co.uk