Nomas* Projects / Art, Dundee

In the eye of the Needle

In The Eye Of The Needle

Louise Ritchie SSA

An artist works through many processes and experimental pathways that lead to both discoveries and creative cul-de-sacs. This sometimes tangential exploration asks questions of what you do, why you do it and who you are as an artist and person. Most of us are multi faceted with contrary fascinations that in my case compel me to sweep broadly and loosely with abandon... paint soaked brush in one hand and at the same time shrink the gesture down to a controlled needle point on the other.

The creative obsession is in the eye of the beholder and at the core of what makes an artist scratch the artistic itch. In embracing those polar extremes of my compulsive desire to make a mark, the work that forms In The Eye of The Needle allows me to compose the image using the smallest of points or dots that react to and work within selected images or reproductions that have struck a chord in some way. Pouncing, as a method of transferring a drawing or tracing onto another surface using pin prick dots, was used historically during the creation of frescos and by old masters such as Holbein and Tintoretto. The pounce would once have been fine powder or charcoal dabbed through the tracing onto the surface underneath to leave a delicate drawing, but my puncture marks use light to reveal the drawing, transferring my response to the reproduction and subverting or erasing the original image into a palimpsest of something curious and other.

Louise Ritchie SSA, Biography

Louise Ritchie is a visual artist + creative facilitator and graduate of DJCAD. Louise is currently Artist in Residence with Angus Council and has completed public art commissions for Dundee City Council, Angus Council and been commissioned to participate in School Design /Creative Engagement Programmes by Ginkgo Projects and Angus Council. Louise is a lecturer on the BA (Hons) Contemporary Arts Practice Programme UWS/City of Glasgow College and is one of two co founders of research + participatory artists network TRiGGER, funded by ArtWorks Scotland/ Paul Hamlyn Foundation/Creative Scotland. Louise is President of the Society of Scottish Artists, one of the oldest exhibiting societies in the UK showcasing the work of The Impressionists, The Scottish Colourists, Picasso, Degas through to Bruce Mclean and Douglas Gordon and was the first ever organisation to bring the work of Edvard Munch to this country in 1931. She has won several major awards and has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad including exhibitions in London, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Spain. Louise has work in several major collections including The Mirror Group, London, Dundee City Council and Fife Regional Arts. Louise was invited to participate as a performer within installation 'Killing Time', a collaboration between artist Graham Fagen and Suspect Culture`s Graham Eatough at Dundee Contemporary Arts (2006) and as the vocal coach and one of the voices for Speaking The Land for Dalziel + Scullion (2009).