Louisa Boyd
Louisa Boyd has been self-employed as an artist since graduating in 2001. During the last 10 years she has developed her interest and expertise in printmaking and paper sculpture, finding ways to employ traditional skills in innovative ways.
‘Although I embrace new media and digital methods in my work, I also acknowledge tradition and the importance of this in establishing our identity and idea of home. Notions of both familial and cultural tradition lie at the heart of my artistic practice and in many instances I am considering memory and knowledge and how this is transferred across generations.’
Louisa employs a range of print processes to create her beautiful artwork; including etching and screen print, combined with, for example, hand marbling and copper leaf, as integral elements to the cut, folded, constructed forms. She uses traditional methods as a way of continuing a long history of learning, of information passed down through generations. Her techniques ‘evoke ideas of retained memories and the repetition of images alludes to the idea of intergenerational traditions.’
‘Representations of mapping, geometric symbols that represent the elements of nature and more abstract concepts about our individual finite existence find their way into my pieces. I tend to work around the idea that many of us have a sense of place and that this is influenced by both our natural environment and the people that surround us. At the moment I am working with a series of geometric forms called the Platonic Solids. Plato suggested that each one of these three-dimensional, regular forms represented an element of the earth: fire, earth, water, air and the fifth element, difficult to define, became known as aether. A recurring theme in my work, aether was once thought to relate to the space beyond our planet or the celestial sphere.’
