Louise Forthun

Artist Statement

The collision of urban and natural themes first struck me in Tokyo in the summer of 1992 where I was making a visual record of the built environment. I became entranced by Japanese textile design and pattern which are based on natural forms and set about constructing a series of multi-paneled works on paper, each depicting representations of Japan, the Japanese city, the chrysanthemum, stone walls and pebble pathways. So began my obsession with the urban versus the natural world – an obsession that continues today.

Abstraction, according to art critic Bob Nickas, can be thought of as the “filter” through which the recognizable passes and is transformed. I am a visual artist who makes paintings that explore abstraction’s objective as well as non-objective dimensions. My paintings can refer to the identifiable through photography or be purely about themselves. In the pursuit of a personal communicative mode and the desire to define space I draw certain elements from each discipline in order to begin a painting. It is my way to draw together, that which is recognizable with the immediacy of painting and to look at the familiar with new eyes.

Louise Forthun’s Website

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