Louise Sunnucks’ work is rooted in a process of observation, with a senstivity to subtle patterns of change in the natural world. Her art is driven by a desire to record fleeting moments, fragments of experience that would otherwise vanish unnoticed. She catches the ephemeral just before it disappears, focusing on subtle environmental shifts and discarded fragments. Her process begins with careful study - of how light moves across surfaces, how materials decay, how natural forces leave marks. Working from studios in Deal and Tottenham, she transforms these observations through artistic means that deliberately slow perception, inviting viewers to see differently than our usually rushed visual consumption allows. Photographs serve as initial documentation, storing raw information that later feeds her painting and drawing practice.
Drawing and painting are central to her work, with materials selected for their specific qualities and limitations. She builds delicate surfaces using oils and acrylics, applying them in successive layers where each new surface emerges from and partially obscures what came before. Transparent glazes mirror the temporal nature of her subjects, creating depth while allowing glimpses of previous states. Her approach to drawing with charcoal and graphite involves both making marks and taking them away - erasing becomes its own form of addition, with removal revealing as much as application conceals. The accumulated visual information gets compressed into a flattened picture plane, creating what might be called a fossil of memory. This compression leads toward abstraction rather than literal representation, suggesting rather than depicting, hinting rather than stating.
These pages document paintings from five recent series of work, all of which maintain connections to the natural world through movement and pattern. They capture transitions, showing how seemingly random occurrences create unexpected textures in observed surfaces. Overlapping washes produce sensations of constant motion, rendered with a light touch and understated sensitivity. But alongside this gentleness, her work sometimes confronts nature’s overwhelming power; bright, startling colors appear as solid, defensive shapes against softer backgrounds. This tension between delicacy and strength, between transparent washes and opaque forms, creates a visual push-pull that mirrors natural processes. The layering technique reinforces this sense of flux, with each stratum suggesting geological or atmospheric shifts. What emerges isn’t direct illustration but something more open-ended: paintings that hold contradictions, that remain unfixed, that breathe with the rhythms of the world they observe.
Louise earned her first degree in The History of Art and Design from Leicester Polytechnic in 1979. After a career in advertising, she returned to education, graduating from Central St. Martins with a Fine Art degree in 2013.
Email: louisesunnucks@hotmail.co.uk
Instagram: @thereticentartist
Upcoming:
Will and Yates Gallery | solo show | Deal, Kent | May-June 2025
Past:
Nolias Gallery | group show | Great Suffolk Street London | June 2021
Will and Yates Gallery | solo show | Deal, Kent | October 2023
Green and Stone Gallery | group show | Fulham Road London | 2019
The Kaleidoscope Gallery | solo exhibition | Sevenoaks, Kent | February 2018
No Format Gallery | group show | Arch 29 Deptford | 2018
The Rag Factory | group show | Brick Lane, London | 2016
The Crypt | group show | St Pancras Church, Euston Road, London | 2016
The Embassy Tea Gallery | group show | Southwark, London | 2015
The Crypt | group show | St. Pancras Church, Euston Road, London | 2014