about the paintings

Louise Thomas offers various levels of representation: from afar, the work can be read as abstract, whereas upon closer inspection, the viewer can discern portrait paintings beneath the translucent layers of paint and large fluid brushstrokes. Inspired by portraits of Gainsborough and Sargent, Louise Thomas has reinterpreted sections as well as entire paintings by these artists, reclaiming and rendering explicit the landscape characteristics implicit in the original works. Although known primarily for their portraits of wealthy patrons and their families, Gainsborough and Sargent often expressed in their private correspondence the desire to return to the pleasurable but unprofitable landscape painting of their early careers. Enhancing the patterns of light and colour found within the folds of the female sitters' clothes, Thomas transforms the source materials into new mountainous landscapes that embody the opulence of the wealthy sitters in the original portraits. The presence of these once-powerful women can still be found within these paintings, yet with their faces veiled behind layers of paint they return as apparitions, faded with the patina of time, or submerged beneath deep pools of water. Their luminous hands and fallen bodies re-emerge as stone relics within a sublime and monumental landscape.

Louise Thomas was born in London in 1984. She completed a BA in Fine at at Falmouth university. Studying Fine art at Falmouth University Thomas specialized in film making and was awarded  the Ferdynand Zweig Scholarship in 2006 to document Italian fascist architecture. Thomas moved to painting and was shortlisted for the Celeste Painting Prize and 4 New Sensations, organised by the Saatchi Gallery and Channel 4, both in 2007. Solo exhibitions include GTA Tru Life at Ashley , Berlin and Artifice of Paradise at BISCHOFF/WEISS, London (both 2013), while recent group exhibitions include Let the bridges I Burn light the way EXILE gallery, Berlin 2018 and Dimensional circumstances, Nous Tous, Los Angeles.

Thomas was Artist-in-Residence at NES in Skagastrond, Iceland, in 2010 and at the Florence Trust, St Saviours Church, London in 2009.  In 2019 the artist completed new work on a museum commission in Skagafjörður Iceland.

Thomas lives and works in Berlin, Germany.