Louise Balaam Biography

Louise Balaam is a painter of expressive gestural landscapes, representing the wilder areas of the British Isles - moorlands, marshes and the rocky coastlands of Cornwall and Pembrokeshire. Her paintings communicate an intense emotional response to the experience of being in the landscape. Her real obsession is the skies and the particularities of light they cast on the landscape beneath them. Earthy tones are brought into the sky and blues are brought into the land, blurring the distinction between the two. This creates a thread throughout the painting, recalling memories of light on water, the sea meeting the land and the reflective surface of water mingling with the earth of the river bed. Light is the crucial component of her paintings, dictating the emotional impact and atmosphere of the places she depicts.