Louise Bourne Statement, 2026
Natural light on my daily surroundings, the exhilaration of seeing, begins all work, and makes me itch to paint. I am curious how colors shift given a light condition, and how these changes migrate through and structure a painting. The sensation of seeing and the physical act of responding in paint, awaken feelings that link me to what I value in being alive.
I work from direct observation, returning to places in the landscape, and to interior/exterior settings. Each time they present different phenomena. Often large paintings made in the studio arise from gatherings of very small watercolors and ink drawings.
Changing color-light creates a wordless narrative. I hope the paintings awaken feelings brought to us not by nameable objects, but by effects of light and the act of creating.
Current work at Cynthia Winings Gallery, comes from spending late winter in a southern France village, and revisiting a Maine landscape that recently became available to me again.
Louise Bourne
About the Guanajuato, Mexico Paintings:
This group of paintings is about what always fascinates me: how color changes as it moves through space, in specific light, and how these shifts create structure in a painting. The location is new: a mountain town in Central Mexico, where I lived for four weeks mid winter.
Light and Shadow on stone, stucco and fountains presented color intricacies that made me itch to paint. The visual information gathered kept my practice going well after my return home. I hope this work goes beyond travel painting, so that the paintings represent themselves, and awaken some sensations in the viewer.
Bio:
Louise Bourne is an award winning artist, whose paintings have been featured in solo and group exhibitions in cultural centers and galleries, including Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine; Gallery 61 in New York City; Anne Irwin Fine Art in Atlanta; the Greenhut Gallery in Portland, Maine; Alpers Fine Art in Andover, Massachusetts; Smith Killian Fine Art in Charleston, South Carolina; the Aitken Bicentennial in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada; the George Marshall Store Gallery in York, Maine. In addition, her work is in public and corporate collections, including those of the Maine Medical Center in Portland; Boston Children’s Hospital in Boston; Bay Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts; and the Department of Public Safety in Houlton, Maine.