Florence Trust

The paintings of Louise Thomas draw inspiration from the dissonance between architectural structures and the surrounding world. She seeks to explore the architecture of abandoned buildings, including 1930s Italian architecture, North American resort complexes, Victorian hospitals, and Lidos. Moreover, her research extends to drawing upon her own travels, photographic resources and holiday brochures. It is through this understanding of the political and historical context of these great structures that that she can begin to construct her abstracted images of nostalgia, and fleeting moments of existence.

Her most recent body of work began when she was investigating the archives of Country Life Magazine, which holds photographs of country houses dating back to the beginning of the 20th Century. Upon further research, she discovered that some of the photographs were not published and hundreds of the ostentatious homes were destroyed by fire. This held an important meaning with the artist that such decadent and beautiful interiors only existed in an archive.

These new paintings are an attempt to recollect or recover something of what was lost, and are the culmination of researching personal accounts of growing up in the buildings. Thomas uses literature as a great influence, notably Rainer Maria Rilke's childhood memories of his grandfathers sprawling mansion; "the staircases that descended so gracefully and ceremoniously, and other narrow, spiral stairs, where you moved through the darkness as blood moves in the veins", as well as Virginia Woolf's novel 'Orlando' and its rich visual descriptions.

Through the haunted stillness of her canvases, the artist attempts to ameliorate dystopian spaces by allowing a new visual experience through the juxtaposition of historical and contemporary sites. All of her decisions fall on the line between abstraction and her awareness of the materiality of paint and an attempt to depict or represent subjects.