Louise Balaam

Louise Balaam is a painter of expressive gestural landscapes, representing the wilder areas of the British Isles - moorlands, marshes and the rocky coastlands of Cornwall and Pembrokeshire. Her paintings communicate an intense emotional response to the experience of being in the landscape. Her real obsession is the skies and the particularities of light they cast on the landscape beneath them. Earthy tones are brought into the sky and blues are brought into the land, blurring the distinction between the two. This creates a thread throughout the painting, recalling memories of light on water, the sea meeting the land and the reflective surface of water mingling with the earth of the river bed. Light is the crucial component of her paintings, dictating the emotional impact and atmosphere of the places she depicts.

"I'm continually fascinated by how paint, specifically oil paint, can evoke and suggest light, space and air."

The materiality and sensual qualities of oil paint are an important element of Louise’s process. Balaam is ‘fascinated’ by the way in which paint can express feelings that cannot be put into words, somehow conveying an emotional resonance through the ‘mysterious process of painting’. The materiality of the paint adds another layer to her representations of the land - painting its colours in pigments derived from the earth itself. Balaam uses what she refers to as ‘coloured mud’ to evoke the space and light of the landscape, responding to the elemental opposition of land and sky.