Visual artist Charlotte Loukes Follow.Art Card

About me

Charlotte’s early life was spent in East Anglia under giant skies and endless beaches.. Since studying Painting at Chelsea College of Art in the 1990’s she has exhibited at galleries in London, Manchester and around Sussex. She lives and works in West Sussex, with its rolling chalk downs and ancient footpaths.

Charlotte's paintings are about place, time and history. Fascinated by geoglyphs, archaeology and palaeontology and inspired by folktales and spiritual belief, she sees how fossils are created by the material around the bones in the same way our experience of the world is created by stories we tell and are told.

Paths and tracks hold so many memories and hidden stories, using the ideas behind Trace Hypothesis, her work is created around the ghosts and folktales of the past still haunting the place. Our ancestors created monsters and heroes, who came to life through repeated telling. Cautionary tales, lost love, the mischievous and sometimes sinister fae folk. Against all of this is the beauty of the light bouncing off the hills and chalk paths, and shadows cast by the trees and hedgerows.

Country lanes us of the innocence of driving before we came aware of the toll taken on the environment, when empty roads meant freedom and escape, something we need more than ever.;

Drawing is the starting point for her work creating the foundation for loose brushstrokes and layers of colour. The time taken painting is an echo of the time the landscape and legends have taken to evolve.