Fill your basket – Louise Evans

Fill your basket is the latest solo exhibition by artist Louise Evans. New and old paintings are presented together to highlight notions of time and change, dealing with paint as an organic, movable matter.

The processes used to construct these paintings, have become almost ritualistic as the evolving surfaces of paint are formed through acts of concealing, revealing and manipulating the material over long periods of time. Evans uses alternative methods of inscribing and cutting into thick oil paint to reveal and unravel it, piercing with wall nails, cutting with a scalpel or tearing with hands.

These tactile, built surfaces create both tensions and harmony between colours which are heavily layered and manipulated. The constraints of a canvas or wooden cradled board are used as something to defy and push against. This means the paint will often appear as if it is falling off , wrapping around or protruding away from the surface. Evans’ ongoing preoccupation with edges is central to her practice: paint extends beyond the edges of the support – in response to the formal relationships within it – thus enhancing its status as an object.  Recent works use additional material built into layers of oil paint such as scrim which aim to create moments of entanglements and mutations of matter within a frame. These processes consider the paintings with corporeal significance, drawing parallels between the body and the painting.

Drawings are used as a way of thinking, to develop form, experiment with material and importantly to play with layers of colour. At times, drawings are made from paintings, used as a way of understanding and reflecting on a more lengthy process.

The paintings are often triggered by observed, lived experiences. They may begin with a specific choice of shape, colour, surface treatment, or material.  The work asserts itself as a series of pentimenti: it accrues subsequent layers of paint: each layer and mark affirming the previous one. The paintings emerge as ever-shifting entities, uncovering its own sense of time and history; accounting for a lived experience.

Louise Evans’ paintings explore ideas of marking time, actions and events through a succession of visual considerations and process-led methods. Evolving surfaces of paint are formed in an act of concealing, revealing,  and manipulating the material. Oil paint is applied in thick layers forcing the activity of painting to slow down and allow the paint to dry. In the final stages, the paintings are often coated with translucent strata of colour, acting as unifying agents. These processes consider the paintings with corporeal significance, drawing parallels between the body and the painting. Evans’ ongoing preoccupation with edges is central to her practice: paint often extends beyond the edges of the support – in response to the formal relationships within it – thus enhancing its status as an object. 

The paintings are often triggered by observed experiences. They  may then begin with a specific choice of shape, colour, surface treatment, or material.  Evans’ work asserts itself as a series of pentimenti: it accrues subsequent layers of paint: each layer and mark affirming the previous one. The paintings emerge as ever-shifting entities, uncovering its own sense of time and history; accounting for a lived experience.

Louise Evans is an artist born in London, living and working in Glasgow. She graduated from Wimbledon College of Art (2012) with a BA in Fine Art Painting and is currently participating on the Turps Banana, Correspondence Course (22-24).