Louise Smith Finds Freedom Through Art
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Meet Louise Smith: The Dee Why Artist Bringing Colour, Creativity and Joy to Every Canvas
Louise Smith’s paintings are vibrant, bold and uplifting art. Being in front of an easel is her happy place, and she loves experimenting with colours, shapes and styles.
“I don’t like to necessarily be bound by naturalistic colours. It’s fun to mix paints and see what happens, where it takes the painting,” Louise tells Neighbourhood Media. “After completing a painting with lots of detail, I like to lash out on a big canvas, an abstract with big brushes, and splash the paint about to release the confinement of all those details.”
What inspired Louise to Paint?
Though she now truly enjoys the freedom of expression and unbridled imagination, Louise’s impetus to start painting came from somewhere quite pragmatic.
“My house needed some art on the walls."
Inspired by a friend’s beautiful floral painting, Louise began researching Australian native flowers. This ultimately led to her painting a very large canvas of flowers which still adorns her wall to this day.
Native flowers feature a lot in Louise’s works. She is drawn to their unique, distinct shapes and bold colours. For the same reason, Louise also likes painting native birds, beach and ocean scenes, natural landscapes, and themes with a particular Australian flavour.
“I like to paint just about any subject that has bright colours,” Louise explains, “and I enjoy the freedom to paint abstracts. I think I'm drawn to the ocean because of its colours. Such variations of blue and green and the contrast of the sand and rocks, the brilliant white of waves. Plus it doesn't have to be exactly as I see - there's some latitude in my interpretation.”
How long does each painting take?
When working on a painting, Louise sets aside several hours, allowing herself time to get into the right headspace. There’s no pressure to produce.
“It's like meditation for me,” Louise says, then adds: “Painting can be a bit lonely though — spending hours alone — so I like painting with other artists too, learning from them and being inspired by what they create. I belong to a couple of groups and the other artists bring different talents.”
Favourite Mosman Spots
Louise and her husband live in Dee Why, but her grandparents lived in the Mosman area and she often visited with her family when she was young. She still visits frequently and likes to show friends some of local attractions.
“One of my favourite day trips, especially if you want to impress an out-of-area guest, is a walk from Neutral Bay to Mosman, along the harbour and through the streets. Some view-points of the harbour along the way are mesmerising and there are nice places to eat, drink or get a coffee at either end. You can retrace the walk or hop a ferry to the city and catch another ferry back to your starting point. You can’t go wrong,” says Louise.
For the past two years, Louise and her husband have been travelling overseas and around Australia. Currently, they’re residing in Cronulla to be close to Louise’s 95-year-old mother and to look after her sister’s cat while she’s away.
If you look at Louise’s website, you’ll see she’s clearly been inspired by the range of interesting locations around the Shire. She has also embraced the local artists community.
“I found a wonderful art group at Cronulla Beach where I learned a lot about painting landscapes/beaches around me. You can see I still like to adapt them to my sort of colourful interpretation and experiment with painting styles. I like to have a go at different techniques of painting to keep the interest up, but I think its good discipline to do realistic paintings too every now and then. Also our art group was having a little exhibition at the beach and I knew paintings of the beach and other local highlights were likely to sell…and they did! Out of ten paintings I took, I sold four.”
Louise and her husband will be taking a road trip around Australia for the next seven months. She’s had to pack her canvases away but she is bringing an A5 artist’s pad and some watercolours so she can keep up her skills and capture some moments of beauty.
And then?
“Back to Dee Why in January and back to normal suburban life and hopefully some BIG paintings.”
Comments