Louise Dear
There’s a quite clear and distinct visual undercurrent of Art Nouveau found in the (not so) deep and (not so) dark underbelly of acclaimed contemporary portrait artist, Louise Dear's signature compositional work. There's also a touch of 1960s psychedelia going on therea-pictorial-bouts too, but that's another story. What we're immediately confronted with is however, a broad and insanely colourful spectrum of familiar faces. And heads. Generic womenfolk with casual and pop cultural traces of iconic female faces over the years from fashion fatales, Twiggy and Bardot to indie poster girl for a recently current generation, Kate Moss. Not that Dear has, to the best of our knowledge, painted the visually enhanced likeness of any of the aforementioned. Mesmerising and hypnotically hued and saturated all the same in our book.
So what do we know of Dear thus far? Well, we're aware that she's a painter with a simple ambition, which much is for sure. And that singular aspiration and illustrative mission statement as such is to create beautiful paintings, according to the sales blurb on Dear's own web presence. And we can definitely concur that she's made a forcible and pleasing habit of doing just that since her inception as a fine artist. Dear is the very visual architect of volumous, largely scaled, overtly contemporary figurative works which are all illuminated and graphically projected by the wanton application of colour. Vivacious, intense, beguiling and ostensibly shocking colours we may add, that assails our senses with an emotion and power.
Characteristically, Dear manifests her pictorial visions on prefabricated aluminium, initially priming the surface area then proceeding to throw, rub, pour and drip a collection of varying reactionary materials onto said surface so as to cement a solid backdrop vista on which to conduct the layers and intricate detailing thereafter. These typically fluid materials include inks, dyes, glosses and glitter, which all converge on Dear's traditional pieces to create the finished and highly compositional article. Once this initial, and elaborate process, has been realised, then Dear will scratch, sand or general distress the resultant image, depending on what that conclusive image is and what form its overlay will be rendered in. It's Dear fascination with refreshingly alternative mixture and solutions to determine what interacts best with which, that marks her out for being somewhat unique in this field. She's evidentially passionate about the adaptation of movement, individual textures and naturally occurring reliefs and essentially how they react and respond to one another's involvement in the process, and it's this interest in the often sporadic evolution of her dramatic pieces that ensues her work engages with her ever expanding audience.
A little further down the line, and as the painting takes further shape, Dear begins to concern herself with the marks, and how the linear lines found within a magnified face or body flow, from an organic perspective. The original selection of elements that singularly combine to make up a conventional photograph are crucial devices and artistic aids to Dear's labour intensive process, and she readily magnifies certain aspects to such an n extent that a new dynamic to the piece is created and fostered then and there. These semi-finished pieces are then stylised and ordered, with the determined lines defining the independant sections of colour and texture which fuse to make the study what it is by the final, improvised flourishes. Speaking of this part of a typical composition's journey, Dear stresses; "My subjects exist on many levels, portraying innocence yet also the lack of it. The children are story book beautiful, their unique spirit captured and immortalised in that perfect state”. The fine artist goes on to add; “By securing a tender moment or snatches of childhood memories, they are incredibly sensual, captivating, reaching out to their viewer”.
Dear’s nudes are best described as sensually erotic, whilst they’ve been equally labelled as being beautifully demure yet subtly provocative at the same time. Which leads us nicely to Dear’s inspirations, and those artists both old and new who have helped shaped her pictorial stances and expressionism, whether altogether knowingly or rather having had a more subconscious influence and involvement. Utamaro and Takashi Murakami are found high on Dear’s ever-diverse compilation of big hitters, the former being an 18th Century exponent of the ‘floating world’ movement and fellow artists who are said to have influenced Art Nouveau in the 20th Century; the latter part of the ‘superflat’ movement of contemporary Japan. Aside from those two exponents, Dear mentions Alphonse Mucha and the exceptional nudes of Egon Sheille, alongside the revered likes of Jeff Koons, Paul Morrisson, Lisa Yuskavage and Walt Disney as it happens.
So what do we know of Dear thus far? Well, we're aware that she's a painter with a simple ambition, which much is for sure. And that singular aspiration and illustrative mission statement as such is to create beautiful paintings, according to the sales blurb on Dear's own web presence. And we can definitely concur that she's made a forcible and pleasing habit of doing just that since her inception as a fine artist. Dear is the very visual architect of volumous, largely scaled, overtly contemporary figurative works which are all illuminated and graphically projected by the wanton application of colour. Vivacious, intense, beguiling and ostensibly shocking colours we may add, that assails our senses with an emotion and power.
Characteristically, Dear manifests her pictorial visions on prefabricated aluminium, initially priming the surface area then proceeding to throw, rub, pour and drip a collection of varying reactionary materials onto said surface so as to cement a solid backdrop vista on which to conduct the layers and intricate detailing thereafter. These typically fluid materials include inks, dyes, glosses and glitter, which all converge on Dear's traditional pieces to create the finished and highly compositional article. Once this initial, and elaborate process, has been realised, then Dear will scratch, sand or general distress the resultant image, depending on what that conclusive image is and what form its overlay will be rendered in. It's Dear fascination with refreshingly alternative mixture and solutions to determine what interacts best with which, that marks her out for being somewhat unique in this field. She's evidentially passionate about the adaptation of movement, individual textures and naturally occurring reliefs and essentially how they react and respond to one another's involvement in the process, and it's this interest in the often sporadic evolution of her dramatic pieces that ensues her work engages with her ever expanding audience.
A little further down the line, and as the painting takes further shape, Dear begins to concern herself with the marks, and how the linear lines found within a magnified face or body flow, from an organic perspective. The original selection of elements that singularly combine to make up a conventional photograph are crucial devices and artistic aids to Dear's labour intensive process, and she readily magnifies certain aspects to such an n extent that a new dynamic to the piece is created and fostered then and there. These semi-finished pieces are then stylised and ordered, with the determined lines defining the independant sections of colour and texture which fuse to make the study what it is by the final, improvised flourishes. Speaking of this part of a typical composition's journey, Dear stresses; "My subjects exist on many levels, portraying innocence yet also the lack of it. The children are story book beautiful, their unique spirit captured and immortalised in that perfect state”. The fine artist goes on to add; “By securing a tender moment or snatches of childhood memories, they are incredibly sensual, captivating, reaching out to their viewer”.
Dear’s nudes are best described as sensually erotic, whilst they’ve been equally labelled as being beautifully demure yet subtly provocative at the same time. Which leads us nicely to Dear’s inspirations, and those artists both old and new who have helped shaped her pictorial stances and expressionism, whether altogether knowingly or rather having had a more subconscious influence and involvement. Utamaro and Takashi Murakami are found high on Dear’s ever-diverse compilation of big hitters, the former being an 18th Century exponent of the ‘floating world’ movement and fellow artists who are said to have influenced Art Nouveau in the 20th Century; the latter part of the ‘superflat’ movement of contemporary Japan. Aside from those two exponents, Dear mentions Alphonse Mucha and the exceptional nudes of Egon Sheille, alongside the revered likes of Jeff Koons, Paul Morrisson, Lisa Yuskavage and Walt Disney as it happens.