Many people have Louise Body’s work on their walls without knowing it, but now the Hastings-based painter - who puts a coastal twist on the traditional artist’s smock - has made a name for herself worldwide
From the time she picked up a felt tip pen and started drawing with her grandmother, Louise Body had no doubt what she wanted to be when she grew up. ‘There was never anything else I even considered,’ she says from her lofty studio in Hastings. ‘I can say it now without feeling too much of an idiot, but art is a vocation and it’s really part of who I am, and I can’t separate the two.’
Drawing birds and vases of flowers as a child, nowadays the majority of Louise’s multi-layered works depict landscapes, particularly the ones on her doorstep. The paintings are typically created using sweeps of acrylic paint applied directly onto board, a technique that allows her to quickly build up colour and texture.
‘I became interested in landscapes when I was at art college,’ she explains. ‘I would often take the bus or train from Nottingham, where I did my fine art degree, into the Peak District with my sketchbook and draw the valleys and hills around Dove Dale.’
Fast forward to now and Louise is surrounded by one of the country’s oldest fishing fleets in Hastings and today the boats are a recurring theme, depicted in works such as Where The Boats Come In.
‘Inspired by the general clutter of boating and fishing equipment that we see on some of our coastline, I love the idea that this way of life hasn’t changed for hundreds of years,’ Louise says. ‘In Hastings it has become a key part of the heritage of the town and feels very much a part of the landscape.’
Surrounded by two generations of creativity on both sides of her family, a love of art and the freedom to pursue that passion was instilled in her for as long as she can remember.
‘By coincidence both my grandmothers met in the 1930s at Southend Art College and then the Second World War got in the way and interrupted their artistic careers’, says Louise, who moved to Brighton when she was 17 to complete an Art Foundation course.
‘My grandma -my dad’s mum - did go on to do some illustrations but in those days it wasn’t really encouraged for a woman to be an artist. It was really quite unusual, and you were pushed down the illustration or textile design route. Both my grandmothers painted throughout their lives but it wasn’t a profession for them.’
Louise’s mother was also an art student at the former Eastbourne College of Art and Design when well-known Sussex artist and printmaker Robert Tavener was vice principal. Her father was a freelance photographer, who initially used a garden shed as a darkroom, and became a prominent commercial car photographer.
‘It always felt like nobody really had a proper job in my family,’ laughs Louise. ‘It was only later when I spoke to other people I realised it was unusual. Being artistic was something that was really encouraged and praised in our family.
'It was a lovely creative childhood and I was very lucky. I remember painting all the time with one of my grandmas in the studio in her garden in Mayfield. To begin with I loved felt tips, and painting came a bit later. I loved drawing birds and vases of flowers. I’ve got some really early drawings and wallpaper designs that I did when I was about 12, which is funny because I ended up doing that for a long time and being most well-known for some of my bird paintings.’
Her move into wallpaper was an accident that happened after she took a studio at the Phoenix Art Space in Brighton and joined a group of artists there called Maze.
‘We put on a show called Housebound which was exhibited downstairs at the Phoenix. It was about domestic environments and rather than painting I thought I’d do something different and screen printed wallpaper with hands holding tea cups in different positions. It was called More Tea Vicar. Lots of people asked if they could buy it and so I started making it to order.’
Louise secured a Prince’s Trust grant, plus a year’s support from a mentor, and set up her business in 2003. She went to London’s 100% Design, the UK’s largest design trade show, where her idiosyncratic and original designs for wallpapers and fabrics, such as the avian-themed Harry’s Garden and Garden Birds caught the eye of glossy magazine editors and she was widely featured on the interior design pages.
‘I also had wallpaper called Erotica which was often featured in the press and over the years has adorned the walls of many downstairs toilets,’ she laughs. ‘In those first years it grew very quickly because very few people were doing artisan wallpaper. It was quirky and exciting, and I felt as if I was in on the beginning of something new.’
As a result, her work was seen by British fashion designer Paul Smith who invited Louise to collaborate on a women’s clothing collection.
‘I didn’t get much money for it, but it was fun and they put my name on everything,’ she recalls. ‘Harry’s Garden was used on T-shirts and Garden Birds was used as an all-over print on blouses, dresses and tunics and the lining of a jacket. I did something for Laura Ashley on the back of that and then Dr. Martens where motifs from my wallpaper designs were used on some of their boots.’
By 2018 Louise’s enthusiasm for wallpaper started to fade. ‘The onset of digital printing lost it for me,’ she explains. ‘When I first started you had to get every colour for your wallpaper etched onto a roller in the Isle of Man and get the rollers shipped over and there was a minimum print run of 200 rolls. It was a factory process. Now anyone can send off a digital file and you have your own wallpaper.
‘I’m a fine artist at heart and so I started painting again,’ says Louise who has three children with husband Jonny. Her work has gone on show the length of the country from Scotland to Sussex, including the annual Fair Ground event at Glyndebourne which showcases contemporary art in the county.
During lockdown she gave up her studio in St Leonards to work from the top floor of the family home above the Old Town.
‘If I stick my head out of the roof skylight I can see the sea,’ she says. ‘It’s important for me to live by water. I need that space and I love looking out into a big nothingness.’
Louise does yoga most mornings and goes out for a run three days a week. When she gets back and dons her trademark painting gear you know she means business.
‘I have denim boiler suit that I work in if I know I’ve got a full day of serious painting ahead,’ she says. ‘I also like to paint in my fisherman’s smock as it has useful big pockets.’
Her abstract paintings, often depicting sea and landscapes in and around Hastings are mostly created from memory with many featuring her preferred palette of plaster pinks and mineral greens.
‘I am always taking photos when I am out but I tend not to sketch,’ she explains. ‘It’s really making mental notes while I am out and then processing them back in the studio.
‘I never start a painting with an intention. I build up layers, so often do lots of underpainting that will then get painted over and the finished painting will probably have five or six paintings under it.
‘That’s probably because I am always editing. I would like to be able to create something with a few stokes but you wouldn’t get all the underlying marks coming through. It can feel like a struggle doing a painting, but I think that struggle is important and without the struggle it wouldn’t be such a successful painting.’
Louise’s work now sells around the world, as far away as Australia, and she also takes on commissions. Often working on up to 10 paintings at a time, Louise says: ‘Traditionally artists worked on more than one painting because they were waiting for oil paints to dry on canvas. I work with acrylic which dries quickly, but it would be too intense for me to work on just one painting and I have to jump from one to another.’
During the pandemic she became actively involved in the not for profit company Artist Support Pledge which provided a springboard for her work. Created by artist Matthew Burrows, who also lives in East Sussex, to help artists when shops and galleries were closed, it is now a global movement. Painters and creators post their works on Instagram for a maximum price of £200, and when they reach sales of £1,000 they pledge to buy £200 worth of work from fellow artists.
As she adds another layer of paint to one of her ongoing works, it’s evident Louise is very happy to have made the switch from creating wallpaper to becoming a full-time artist and enriching peoples’ walls in a very different way.
louisebody.com
