LouiseDear
Louise Dear
I am a painter with a simple ambition; to create beautiful paintings.
Some of my earliest memories are of my incredibly happy family life spent in exotic locations such as South Africa and the Far East. At the age of six my family returned to England and set up home in a small country village in the beautiful Hampshire countryside. Initially intending a career within the fashion business, I studied fashion design at Medway College of Art & Design, which brought me in close contact with the burgeoning Young British Artists. It was here I developed my lifelong love of art. However with the spirit of adventure having been instilled in me so young, at the tender age of 21, I purchased a 1963 Bedford ambulance with my partner, painted it honey pink, and promptly set off to see the world. My time was spent working whilst consuming the sumptuous splendours of Europe, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and dipping an inquisitive toe into the divine indulgence of North Africa. Returning home in 1987, we bought a three month return ticket to India yet did not return to England for a further seven years. My adventures took me travelling extensively throughout South East Asia, continually gorging on its extreme delights until eventually arriving in Darwin, North Australia. From here we travelled overland to Sydney where we set up home and I worked as an exhibition designer for Lego, Australia. In 1993 I came back to my roots, gave birth to my greatest creation of all - my daughter Lama - and returned to full-time education. Now settled in the picturesque town of Totnes, I have been working as a professional artist since graduating from University College Chichester in 1998. I have exhibited extensively over the past decade; from London to New York and Sydney to LA and shown at the Royal Academy sparking the interest of several major museums. My fabulous adventures continue to inspire my work, creating paintings which are vibrant, passionate and intense with a sensual eroticism which are both provocative yet at the same time, demure.
CrushI
Limited Boxed Canvas of 150 Image size 35” x 35” £595
CrushII Limited Boxed Canvas of 150 Image size 35” x 35” £595
Yum Yum Limited Boxed Canvas of 150 Image size 39” x 39” £695
Coo..ee! Limited Edition Giclée of 150 Image size 24” x 17¾” Framed £350
Lovely Limited Edition Giclée of 150 Image size 24” x 17¾” Framed £350
I am a painter in love with painting; with a passion and urgent need to create. I am passionate about colour; shocking, vibrant and intense, continually exploring the power it has to invade our senses and influence our emotions. Using this colour I create large, bold, contemporary, figurative works on aluminium canvases; resulting in what I hope is a vibrant and evocative piece of work. My subjects exist on many levels, portraying innocence, yet also the lack of it. The children are story book beautiful; their unique spirit captured and immortalised in that perfect state. By securing a tender moment or snatches of childhood memories they are incredibly sensual, captivating their viewer. Strong colours, bold strokes and interdependent layers dominate my work as my main subject - my little girl - rages with adolescence, music, art and boys, on her journey to becoming a beautiful young woman. My nudes are sensually erotic, beautifully demure yet subtly provocative, influenced by Utamaro and the 18th century Japanese artists of the ‘floating world’ and more recently their influence on the Art Nouveau period of the early 20th century. For my original paintings I work on large sheets of prefabricated aluminium, priming the surface then throwing, rubbing, pouring and dripping inks and dyes, glitter and glosses, to form a background. This is then sanded, scratched and distressed, depending on what image will be overlaid. I continually experiment with a multitude of materials, seduced by their substances, fascinated with their movement, individual textures and how they respond to one another. As the painting evolves, I become intrigued with the marks and how the line, within a magnified face or body, organically flows. It is as though the image has, at this stage, become a vehicle for the marks. Selecting elements from a photograph and magnifying them to such an extent creates a new dynamic. The finished pieces are stylised and ordered, the line defining the independent sections of colour and texture.