Louise Blyton

Better Times, Past and Future (Abstract painting)

2020

Louise Blyton is a reductive artist exploring the romance of raw linen and dry pigment. Blyton’s geometrically shaped canvases explore color, light and form through the visual language of Reductivism, an aesthetic style characterized by streamlined compositions, restricted color and a reduction of form and means. Identifying with Reductivism’s simplicity, Blyton’s shaped canvases and three-dimensional wall sculptures elevate craftsmanship and process, achieving a compositional clarity that unifies color and form. To construct her works, Blyton covers custom built balsa wood stretchers with raw linen, adorning them with layers of pure pigment or acrylic paint. Each pigment reacts differently to raw linen and requires a specific number of coats to reach the artist’s desired level of saturation. As the artist explains, “I’m always looking for a kind of quietness and harmony when making my works even if the color being used is loud.” Blyton creates her spatial dimension by manipulating the shape of the canvas, which escapes from the flat surface of the wall, confusing its role as a painting. “Rather than responding to the architecture, they ask particular attributes of the building to act as support,” as some works appear to climb the surface of the walls, while others straddle columns and corners. Blyton lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, in 1988. Her works are held in significant corporate and private collections in Australia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Portugal and the United States.