Louise Shotter

 Fifty-year old Louise, who has exhibited from Scotland to London and whose work can be found in the collections of Lord Howland of Woburn Abbey, Kim Wilde and Lord Rix as well as in the Herts County Archive, creates jewellery and sculpture and paints in acrylic and watercolour. She finds most of her inspiration in the world’s wild animals and makes annual field trips to South Africa, despite a serious spinal condition that has left her partially dependent on a wheelchair.

 

At school art was her life. “I lived in the art room,” she recalls. “I just never stopped drawing and luckily had an art teacher who inspired me to fulfil my potential.”

 

At art college in St Albans she recalls drawing the famous “Naked Civil Servant” Quentin Crisp, but left after her foundation year. “I wanted to study ceramics, but they didn’t understand the subject and wanted me to be a graphic artist, so I left.”

 

 She then tried a number of crafts, including making children’s clothes and decorating cakes, before she found her niche as a potter. For 15 years and inspired by the example of the renowned ceramics designer Susie Cooper, she created highly decorative tableware that she sold to retail outlets across the country. Then disaster struck when her back collapsed and she was forced to abandon pottery for the less physically demanding craft of jewellery.

 

“Deidre Woolgar drummed the basics into me,” she explains, “then I taught myself how to set stones in silver and gold. There were difficulties at the start, but I persisted and my jewellery can now be found in collections around the world and I have a personal hallmark registered with the London assay office.”

 

Since leaving pottery her favourite subject matter, whether in jewellery, painting or sculpture, has always been animals, particularly animals in the wild, and she works from both drawings and photos. She has a passionate interest in animals running at speed, loves painting and sculpting greyhounds, and is currently obsessed with African wild dogs.

 

As a jeweller one of her obvious influences is the Art Nouveau movement, but she also turns to Anglo-Saxon and other ancient artefacts for inspiration. She obtains her opals direct from opal mines in Australia.

 

Recently, after several years away, she has returned to ceramics, and admits that she has missed making pots very much.

 

You can see a film of  this exhibition and an interview with Louise by downloading from the video link below (download may take a couple of minutes).