Silent stillness and the transient atmospherics of light draw Louise Fairchild to paint the water and its reflections. The mystical infinite quality, in particular the exquisite, vaporous and ephemeral luminosity of the light as it moves through the trees and reflects back onto the water. Capturing the fleeting moment, just before the sunlight burns away the mist or the light fading into dusk, attempting to suspend it in time.
The absence of any human presence is a deliberate decision, lending a timeless quality, an attempt to transport the viewer back to a past millennia when our impact on the planet was more benign.
Metallic pigment is used in the under layers, before applying many thin translucent oil glazes, each one dry before applying the next, in an attempt to capture the allusion of movement and light answering to light as the viewer moves around the painting and the light conditions change in the room.
Commissions in this period include British Airways, Barclays Bank PLC, The Home Office, Fortnum and Mason, Bloomsbury Publishing, Boots the Chemist, Blass Wine Estates, Random House Publishing, Woolwich Building Society and Marks and Spencer PLC.
She also had numerous portrait commissions for the board of directors of companies such as Sainsburys Plc, Fidelity Investments International and PriceWaterhouseCoopers, as well as a monthly commissioned portrait of a prominent figure in business or government for the CBI magazine.
Her work hangs in private collections throughout the UK, the US and Asia.
Fine Art (BA Hons) at Reading University