LOU SPIRA SUMMARY
Lou Spira
I have three main areas of practice: painting, monoprinting, and charcoal drawing.
I normally paint in oils on canvas, card or wood, and on both small and larger scale pieces. I have developed a personal method of monoprinting using collage and reprinting, to obtain density of image on a large scale.
Drawing has always played a central role in my practice, and whilst charcoal is the usual medium, I may also use pen and ink, or pencil.
The works are a series of direct responses to things around me, and fall into two subject areas. Still Life and Landscape. Expressive, painterly surfaces and warm-hued colour combinations are common to both genres.
My Still Life pieces are, by their nature closer-focussed, utilising familiar objects, inherited or acquired, I observe their form and light to capture a sense of time, place, and character.
My Landscapes are necessarily broader in their spatial and atmospheric concerns. I am a regular walker and the examples on this website represent a cross-section of recordings made of particular locations I know well. In order to capture the vitality and immediacy of place I work in-situ, experiencing at first hand the changing weather, light and skies.
I exhibit frequently, both nationally and internationally, and my works are in both public and private collections in the UK and abroad.