Louise Ritchie 

Artist Statement
My work revolves around an ongoing series of responses to real and imagined environments. The paintings are not representational but are more a memory of those places, influenced by the emotions and events of the time. They aim to stimulate and provoke thoughts that draw empathy from the viewer. The process of painting for me is about constructing atmospheric spaces where light and colour are layered and punctuated by motifs that allow the eye to travel in and around the painting. The physicality of paint, the variety of scale and surfaces, are all integral to the development of my work and which provides a flexible framework which has developed into a very personal visual vocabulary and expressive dialect. This language composes itself in the way that a piece of music is gradually built up with melody and harmony. Colour expresses the dynamics of loud and soft, while rhythm and balance promote a sense of movement and pace. As a counterpoint to this I employ visual metaphors and symbols derived from my travels and experiences harmonized with my own formal training in music, to lend a sense of both landscape and drama to the work. These symbols represent elements such as heat, sun, water, patterns in land and sea and also architectural forms and motifs such as arches and bridges. Added to that I explore surfaces and textures that give a tactile quality that can be fragile, violent, energetic, sensual and ambiguous within the same piece. The paintings are composed so as to have an initial impact that draws the viewer into this metaphorical space and then leads them through the pictorial pathways that connect the layers and motifs together. With all these components combined I aim to create a work that is intriguing and dynamic and which portrays a range of dimensions from the spatial to the emotional that expresses something of me and my continuing analysis and interpretation of my environment. 




Red Shield / oil on canvas / 3ft x 3ft  

Background
Louise Ritchie gained a fine art degree and post graduate diploma in drawing & painting from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee. She has won several major awards including the Glasgow Art Club Fellowship, RGI (1998), the Scottish Art Club Award (1997), and the Millar Homes Paris Scholarship Citie Des Artes (1990). She has exhibited widely, including a solo show 'Land Light Vision' at Glasgow's Compass Gallery (1996), and at the London and Glasgow Art Fairs. Louise was also nominated for the Millar Homes Young Artist of the Year Award (1990 & 1991), and has work in several major collections including, the Mirror Group, London, Dundee District Council and Fife Regional Arts. She was elected to serve on the Council of the SSA, the Society of Scottish Artists in 1998, and has taught in academic institutions in Glasgow and Dundee. Louise was recently invited to perform within the installation 'Killing Time', a collaboration between artist Graham Fagen and Suspect Cultures Graham Eatough at Dundee Contemporary Arts (2006).




Purple Heart / oil on canvas / 6ft x 6ft

Quote 

"Louise Ritchie, a Scottish Painter, transforms the motifs and sensory impressions recalled from her travels to distant places - Andalucia, Venice, Jerusalem- into points of embarkation for dramatic, almost theatrical oil and mixed media works. Fragments of memory become caught up in the choreography of swirling, rhythmic compositions, expressed in richly luminous colour and loose, expressive brushwork. There is so much energy in these paintings that they seem almost to emit light, rather than reflecting it, bathing the room in the warmth of their own chromatic glow".

Bunny Smedley, Art Critic and Historian for the Fresh Paint exhibition at MacLean Fine Art, Ardean Gallery, Cork Street, London, 2001.