LOUISE SHERIDAN
LOUISE SHERIDAN TALKS OF FRAGMENTS OF A VISUAL DIARY BUT THESE ARE FRAGMENTS WHICH HAVE SIMMERED AND MATURED AND FOUND THEIR PLACE IN A KALEIDOSCOPE OF MEMORIES. THESE ARE PAINTINGS RICH IN THEIR COLOUR AND DARKNESSES, AND RESONANT WITH THE ACCUMULATIONS OF TIME.
Michael Harrison, Director, Kettle's Yard, 1992-2011
My work explores an interest in travel, memory and transience.
In some paintings personal stories mix with imaginary landscapes.
Organic forms transform and evolve; extreme weather conditions, floods and the chaos that results; the power of water, the rise and fall of tides, the depth and strength of the currents and changing light, colour and atmosphere.
I have lived by the River Thames for much of my life and find it visually fascinating.
The foreshore reveals half hidden mysterious objects and structures that hint of layers of history. Working with intuition I build up the paint layers, sometimes drawing into the images.
Paintings were completed after travels to South East Asia, China, Iceland, Cuba and Costa Rica. The environment, images and colours I experienced on a five month trip to India and Nepal had a profound effect on my early work. I continue to use the Nepalese textured and translucent hand made paper that I first discovered in the Himalayas. My grandfather was Japanese and that influence can seen in some paintings.
I completed a B.A. Hons. in Fine Art, Painting at Kingston University and a Post-Graduate Course in Painting in Cyprus, assembling drawings and painted textiles within installations. Later I lived in Barcelona for a year gaining an M.A. in European Fine Art, Painting, at the Winchester School of Art, where I had time both to explore the city and experiment with different techniques. It was during this time that the wax reliefs and mixed media pieces began to emerge.
I regularly exhibit and have completed commissions in the UK and India. I run art workshops for special needs groups, most recently long term in a secure forensic mental health hospital.
LOUISE SHERIDAN
Louise Sheridan had been my student in her first year at art school, so I was determined to see her graduation show at Kingston University. I was totally unprepared for the organized cha2018os that met me: coloured ropes, a vending machine full of multicoloured items… I left her a note to say how much I was impressed. About three years later, Louise phoned and offered to show me the paintings she had done In India. She came into the art school where I was teaching and unrolled these paintings on the floor, like carpets. And like carpets they were rich in incident, pattern and colour, but above all the texture of the daphne bark paper which she still uses, provided an uneven and extraordinarily physical surface. Later we shared a studio and founded an exhibiting group (MM Arts).
The particularity of Louise’s art is her position outside the established canons. Not exactly an ‘Outsider’, (impossible after her art education), she nonetheless shares with those artists a need to express herself without the constraints of style. The result is an art which communicates very directly with the spectator, reminds him or her of things seen or felt, in the most natural way possible.
Some artists present fragments from which a world can be extrapolated. Others, Bosch, Brueghel, Turner, Paul Klee, Dubuffet, for instance, create a world in each work. It is true also of Louise Sheridan. Her works have been, since her first travels in India, densely filled with incident. They constitute an invitation to pass the barrier, enter her world, and be entranced.
Louise Sheridan has truly forged an authentic, individual way of transforming experience into art.
Oliver Bevan
EXHIBITION CV
EDUCATION
1991-92 M.A. European Fine Art, Painting, Winchester School of Art,Barcelona
1979 Cyprus College of Art
1973-77 Kingston University, B.A. Hons Fine Art Painting
SELECTED EXHIBITONS
2019
Outpost 2, Bermondsey Artists' Group, Shortwave, London
London Bridge Hotel: London Festival of Architecture
Re: Bermondsey Artists' Group, Lake Gallery, Southwark Park Galleries
2018
Shortwave, London
Outpost, Bermondsey Artists' Group, Shortwave, London
2017
Shortwave, London
Annual Open, CGP London
Tricks of the Light, Riverside Gallery, Richmond upon Thames
2016
Annual Open, CGP London
2015
Pool, CGP London
2013
Paper Bag, CGP London
2011
Fragments, Ripley Arts Centre, Bromley
Concretum, Dilston Grove, London
2010
Something for the Weekend, The Biscuit Factory, London
Indigo Arts, Obsidian Art, Stoke Mandeville
2009
Rummage, CGP London
2007
Siobhan Davies Dance Studios London with Michele Fuirer
MEME, A05, London
A Higher Vision, SW1 Gallery, London
2006
Janus, CGP London
2005
Paintings in Hospitals, Menier Gallery, London
2004
Cafe Gallery Projects, A Slither and A Slice, 20th Anniversary Show
2003
Paintings in Hospitals Artbridge 2, Sheridan Russell Gallery, London
2002-15
Annual Open, CGP London
2001
The Mystical Landscape, Talisman Fine Art, The Institute of Child Health, London
Sutton House, London
2000
Thornton Bevan Fine Art, London with Jilly Szabo
Medway Maritime Hospital
Ark 2000, Dilston Grove, London
Artplace, Arundel Festival
Many Exhibitions before 2000
COLLECTIONS
Sheffield City Art Galleries
Lady Lodge Arts Centre, Peterborough
The Leicestershire Collection for Schools and Colleges
Camden Picture Loan Scheme
TVi Ltd
Electra Management Services
Sedgwick Group Properties Ltd
St Marys College of Education
Alnwick CE Aided First School Gallery
Banque Paribas
Whinney MacKay-Lewis Partnership
The Towner Art Gallery Collection, Eastbourne
Serco Ltd
Paintings in Hospitals
Private collections in Britain and India
COMMISSIONS
2003 Paintings in Hospitals
1999/00 The Adamson Centre for Mental Health, St. Thomas' Hospital, London
1996 Royal Caribbean Cruise Line
1986 Maudsley Hospital, London
GRANTS
1996 Jacob Mendelson Scholarship Award
1993 London Arts Board
1988 E. and W. Arts
1986 Exhibition grants from GLA and E Arts
1985 Southwark/GLA Artists Grant
1984 Exhibition grant from NW and E Arts
PUBLICATIONS
Interviews with the Artists, CV Publications 1993
Women Artists Diary
Artists and Illustrators Magazine
Kunstbrucke catalogue, Berlin/London 1998
Paintings in Hospitals, Artbridge 2 2003