Louise Sturgis In Studio | 'Be still and know that I am here' | Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery

Louise Sturgis
Be still and know that I am here.
16 November - 16 December 2023
The Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery presents 'Be still and know that I am here,' an exhibition of paintings Louise Sturgis.
‘The paintings in this show are about my return to a landscape that I have felt rooted in and inspired by all my life. They are an attempt to distil the physical, emotional and spiritual experience of being in a landscape that I have loved and carried in me as I have lived and worked and painted elsewhere… It was this landscape that inspired me to be an artist.’
The landscape to which Sturgis has returned is the Kentmere valley in the Lake District. It is still a remote place, of dry-stone walls, of rugged fells, of working hill-farmers and white-washed farmhouses. It is a landscape which Sturgis has known, and been part of, all her life.
‘This is the place where I first experienced the numinous beauty of the world and recognised that this beauty comes to us as much through the crackling roughness of the lichen on a stone, the damp smell of a wooden gate or the mournful sound of the ewes bleating for their lambs at dusk, as from the golden light and the majestic fells.’
Sturgis, in her deep engagement with the land and its life, combined her art-studies with learning how to tend the sheep that - over the centuries - have done so much to create and mould this landscape. She learnt the skills of shepherding here; and went on to work as a shepherd in Iceland, Scotland, and west Cumbria.
Sturgis’s art is imbued with this deep sense of connection. Her paintings evolve from small plein-air sketches, that are then built up into richly layered compositions. Surface colour is informed by contrasted underpainting. They are not topographical records of place but the distillations of experience.
Born in 1962, British Post-War and Contemporary painter Louise Sturgis takes her environment as her subject. Sturgis lives and works in the Lake District where she lovingly observes the quiet pleasures of everyday life in her natural surroundings and transfigures them in paint.
Working primarily with oil paint, either on canvas, board or paper, Sturgis’ studio practice is underpinned by drawing from life and her expressive use of warm muted tones enables her to enhance the atmospheric qualities of the landscapes she depicts.
Sturgis’ artistic skills have been carefully honed over many years of both practising and teaching art. She initially taught art at Magdalen college school in Oxford and went on to become the head of Art at Ampleforth College.
Louise Sturgis trained at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford, and the Royal Academy Schools in London, where she won a Silver Medal for painting. She was a recipient of a Norwegian Government scholarship which allowed her to work for a year in Oslo. Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, and the National Portrait Gallery, London. She has had one-person exhibitions in London, Oxford, Oslo and Bergen, She lives and works in Kentmere where she has recently established a teaching-studio.
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