BIOGRAPHY
Louisa Boyd is a multidisciplinary artist who works with print and sculpture. Louisa has worked as a professional artist for over twenty years, exhibiting both nationally and internationally. Her pieces are included in public and private collections worldwide and she is recognised regularly through prestigious juried exhibitions. She is currently exhibiting at the Royal West Academy of England for their Paper Works show (until April 27). Recent exhibition highlights include: London Art Fair Encounters (2023), Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2023, 2019, 2017 and 2014), Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair (2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 (online edition), 2019, 2018), New Light Prize Exhibition (2020/2021) and the Flourish Award Exhibition (2020/2021) where she was awarded the Great Art Prize. She was invited in 2023 to show work for Just Like Escher at Escher in the Palace in The Netherlands where they exhibited a sculptural work. The exhibition featured 36 international artists including Damian Hirst, Chris Ofili, Alexander McQueen and Escher himself and was put together to celebrate 125 years since Escher’s birth. She was also awarded a scholarship from the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust in 2023 for developing her printmaking practice.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work centres around the persistent human desire to belong. I consider environment and how we use nature to navigate place and find our way in my pieces. My work features celestial symbols, sacred geometry, and map-like imagery to describe a sense of belonging.
My prints and sculptural works are inspired by cartography, both celestial and terrestrial. The forms in my sculptures rely on sacred geometry for their structure using the elements of mathematics that underpin the fabric of the world we exist within. I often feature the Platonic Solids in my sculptural work, working with Plato’s theory that each of the five regular polyhedra connected to the five elements of nature; earth, air, fire, water and aether.
My etchings are made using copper plates with a combination of deep etch techniques and automatic, free drawing into grounds. By layering abstract, drawn imagery made with traditional drawing tools and printmaking processes with more abstract painterly marks, the outcomes are a visual fusion of historic and contemporary ideas.
I integrate traditional methods into my contemporary practice and have spent time learning heritage crafts such as printmaking techniques with a particular focus on etching, bookbinding techniques for finishing skills and hand marbling. Use of such methods allows me to explore belonging from a cultural perspective in my prints and sculptures, yet present these methods in a contemporary context.
