L O U I S A B U R N E T T - H A L L
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Louisa Burnett-Hall’s work is based on specific sites in landscape, interpreting the essence of each place. She explores rivers, streams and waterfalls, where the water reflects its immediate environment, and embodies the elements. ‘Water is our most precious commodity whose wealth of image and symbolic meaning is a rich mine of inspiration. Challenged by its visible and invisible qualities, I seek to interpret the specific character of running water in its environment. The surface is a living skin reflecting light, where the current becomes a calligraphic storyline woven into the composition. My works represent instants in a cycle of time.’ Burnett-Hall’s sense of history and the past in landscape comes from her childhood spent in Winchester in the Itchen Valley. She frequently walked through the valley streams and up on the heights of the surrounding Neolithic hillforts, where the views show a landscape sculpted by man both on and beneath the surface. Louisa’s artistic practice consists of researching a site in situ, where she sketches, photographs and films running water and landscape. In the studio she analyses the collected material and hones it down to find the intrinsic nature of the subject. Inks and water-based media, frequently combined with rich oil pastel, are used to create the flow of movement and free gesture in the carefully constructed compositions. During a five-year Fine Art M.A. course at Edinburgh University, she reconnected with her Scottish origins and discovered the wilder landscape of the north. Following a post-graduate Art Teachers’ Course at London University, she moved to Paris where she lives and works today. Louisa Burnett-Hall was awarded the Médaille de la Ville de Paris for her work in 2009. In 2016, her solo exhibition ‘Water: aria and variations’ was exhibited in Suzhou Art Museum and Shaanxi Art Museum, Xian, in China. |
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