Louise Sunnucks has a multi-disciplinary practice that has an ongoing concern with recording the experience of recording fleeting temporal moments; the over-looked, intangible and discarded. Capturing a memory of the ephemeral prior to its being lost or forgotten. This is rooted the process of observation, being sensitive subtle patterns of change that occur in environments or objects. These ideas are translated her practice through a process of re-enacting these natural phenomena through material qualities that allow her to slow perception and re-define our means of looking.
Within her practice, drawing and painting play a central role. Employing different media in painting such as oils, acrylics and wax to construct a delicate sense of surface. Paint is applied in layers, one surface building from another, while the transparent wax and glazes reflect the temporality of the subject matter. In the charcoal and graphite drawings she applies and erases the material, in a process of removal as addition, using the mark making as a tool to explore physical memory through materials. The accumulated information is collated and flattened into a compressed picture planed patina in order to fossilise memory. These processes result in an open- ended and more abstracted response rather than a literalised depiction.
Her recent work retains the sense of movement and pattern that underlie the natural world. The images produced, capture a sense of flux or transition which seemingly random or chaotic occurrences create in observed surfaces or natural phenomena. These surfaces are hard-wired to the natural world.
The work imbues a lightness of touch and a gentle sensitivity to the beauty of Nature the overlapping washes create a sense of perpetual motion.
However she also captures the overwhelming power that Nature also brings. Shocking colour is a means of embracing the solid, defensive nature of these obdurate shapes she observes around her. This flaming light however is as fleeting as her work with gentle transparent washes of a cool palette. There is a pull and push to her work which is hard-wired to the natural world.
The painting practice of Louise Sunnucks is based on her
observation of the natural and the man-made world. Within her multi-disciplinary practice drawing and painting play a central role whereby she brings our attention to the over-looked, discarded and ephemeral.
She takes photographs as a means to store information that she has gathered. This is then collated and compressed into the picture plane by means of a process that involves layering and erasing thin oil paint washes. This results in an open ended and more abstracted response rather than a literal depiction. Her paintings retain a sense of the natural elements she sees however flimsy the structure, and the layering re-enforces that sense of flux and transition that occurs in the natural world.
Louise works from her studios in Deal and Tottenham
Louise Sunnucks returned to full time education after a career in Advertising and raising a family.
Her first degree was ‘The History of Art and Design’ BA( Hons) Leicester Polytechnic graduating 1979.
She graduated from Central St. Martins in 2013 with a B.A. Fine Art (Hons)
Email: louisesunnucks@hotmail.co.uk
Instagram: @louisesunnucks
Up coming
Will and Yates Gallery | Solo show | Deal,Kent | May 2025
Nolias Gallery | Group show | Great Suffolk Street London | June 2021
Will and Yates Gallery | Solo show | Deal, Kent | October 2023
Green and Stone Gallery | Group Show | Fulham Road London | 2019
The Kaleidoscope Gallery | Solo exhibition | Sevenoaks, Kent | February 2018
No Format Gallery | Group Show | Arch 29 Deptford | 2018
The Rag Factory | Group Show | Brick Lane, London | 2016
The Crypt | Group Show | St Pancras Church, Euston Road, London | 2016
The Embassy Tea Gallery | Group Show | Southwark, London | 2015
The Crypt | Group Show | St. Pancras Church, Euston Road, London | 2014