10 Questions with Ernestine Louise

Ernestine Louise is a writer and painter. The page, canvas, and paper – are as important as the word, paint colors, and placement of them for me. As an artist, she strives for her work to push boundaries in thinking, process, and development. She intentionally leaves room for the observer to engage with her work from their own perspective. She works with paper, acrylic, and mixed media. Her work is an exploration of the self, space, place, feelings, emotions, and color in a non-concrete way. Placed-based art is essential to her practice, using a method of ̈en plein air ̈, not to paint the landscape, but to use the elements of nature as material and co-creator. Her work engages others in a conversation that starts at the surface that moves into deeper levels of self-exploration, understanding, acceptance, rejection, revelation, the aim of her work and practice. She moved to Oslo, Norway, in 2018 to work as an artist.

Her first collection of poetry, "Influence of Place", was published in 2019. Her literary and artistic work has been presented and exhibited in the United States, Spain, Ireland, Norway, and England.

www.ernestinelouise.com | @ernestinelouisewriter

ARTIST STATEMENT

Ernestine Louise is a writer and painter. This is important to know because both practices influence the other. The page, canvas, and paper – are as important as the word, paint colors, and placement of them. With her paintings, she allows the colors that she creates to speak for her. It could be said that she is working with subtle, gentle notions of emotions. She avoids filling in all of the gaps and attempts to leave enough room for the observer to engage with the work from their own perspective and practice. She works with paper and acrylic because these materials are excellent partners, and I use brushes, sponges, rocks, and natural elements.

Her work is an exploration of the self, space, place, feelings, emotions, and color in a non-concrete way. Abstract expressionism is deeply rooted in my approach. She often uses only the color as the title for the paintings. In addition, she titles the series they are part of.

The concrete impression of the world is a constant. By bending the way of seeing, experiencing, enjoying, and understanding the world, it folds the concrete with the abstract. Colors meld into one another, an emotion is more layered than the expression of it outwardly. She is creating the world as it is experienced. Engaging others in a conversation that starts at the surface but has the ability to move into deeper and deeper levels of self-exploration, understanding, acceptance, rejection, and revelation is the aim of her work and practice. Is it possible to go beyond the clickbait or the images that are easily identifiable in a world of memes and emojis that tell us how and what we think? Challenging the need to be viewed versus being really seen is the impact that she desires to create.

The rapid pace of technological advancement, the burning embers and fires of social unease, distrust of governance, and the 24/7 attacks by visual and sound stimulation leave little time to explore the depth of the world beyond its surface impact. The “below the surface” realities of being a part of a connected society are that we retain, respond, and react differently to these experiences, but there is a process of how we get to this place and how it manifests in our individual understanding of shared events or experiences.

Inspiration is abundant from the natural world, dinner with friends, challenging conversations, and sad and depressing moments, to the greatest joys that can be experienced. Having the opportunities to push herself to look beyond; what we should think, what we should know, how we should see, and what we are able to understand in the world, inspires her practice.

INTERVIEW

You work with both painting and poetry. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you developed into the artist you are today. 

My origin story is rooted in my curiosity, a deep appreciation to wonder – to ask what if. I have always been interested in color (although I wear dark colors more often than not), layering, and deconstructing what I have learned versus what I know, which has created a strong foundation for how I explore and experiment in my artistic practice. My practice is one of marination of the world around me and leaning into how it manifests itself in my artistic practice. But I was discouraged as a child to paint the way that I saw the world. I had a teacher who did not appreciate my painting technique, I was eight years old, so I would not say that it was a technique as much as it was intuition. But she scolded me when I failed to paint the flower that she had drawn but instead painted beyond the flower and painted what I saw, colors and layers. I loved color, coloring outside the lines, and creating something that I could not see but knew that it existed, the non-concreteness of the everyday. And I still love that. The naive aspects of my eight-year-old painting style are the truest artistic expression I have ever known. I stopped doing anything artistic then. I was focused more on concrete ideas and work. I allowed my creative interest to take a backseat until I could not any longer. 
Shapes and colors, layers, shades of light, and lines make the world clearer. The sense of wonder that all of these invoke within me is electrifying. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, which opened me and my way of thinking about the world wide open. I discovered that there were and are many different perspectives and approaches in how we think, what we believe, and how we construct the way we reason with ourselves and the world around us. In many ways, I consider this the first creative practice of my artistic career. Learning to think, rethink, un-think, and question myself and my understanding of what I thought that I knew and what I actually did know or could learn have served me well. 
When I decided to give myself permission to 1) create the space to explore my creative practice and 2) not limit myself in what that practice could and would look like, I began to blossom and develop my creative practice in an intentional way that has allowed me to have a practice that I am very humbled and pleased to have. I think that the time away allowed from any artistic endeavors permitted me the space to ground myself and trust myself in my work. 

How would you define yourself as an artist nowadays? And how did your art evolve over the years?

I am a work in progress that contributes to an ongoing evolution of not only my artistic practice but also my living practice. I describe myself as a curious explorer of ideas and the possible potentiality of my own creativity. I have to push myself outside of my comfort zone of what I believe I can accomplish in my work and what it is that I want to create in my practice, thus what I want to put out into the world. It requires letting go of both expectations and control. I have gone from painting small and being uncertain about what I could do to embracing and appreciating the benefits of all formats in my work. Seeing the opportunities to create and collaborate with my materials has affected how I approach my practice. I am constantly evolving as an artist and I hope that this never changes. Exploring styles and concepts of materials and their usages of them excites me. Intentionally playing with ideas and materials is a part of how I see myself evolving. There are many spaces, places, people, and experiences that enlarge and enrich the pool of possibilities of how and where my art will morph into. Being open and ready to receive this potentiality is key.

In your statement, you say "Ernestine Louise is a writer and painter. This is important to know because both practices influence the other." How do you mix the two, and where can we see the influence they have on each other?

Writing came first, and then came painting. I am a writer and painter. Both practices influence the other. The page, canvas, and paper – are as important as the word, paint colors, and placement of them for me. As a self-taught artist finding my voice and developing it has resulted in a tremendous experience of exploration, experimentation, and broadening my curiosity. As an artist, I strive for my work to push boundaries in thinking, process, and development. I am working with subtle, gentle notions of emotions in my writing and my paintings. I try to avoid filling in all of the gaps and attempt to leave enough room for the observer to engage with the work from their own perspective. In this way, both my writing practice and painting practice are influenced by one another.

Your paintings are abstract and deal with personal experiences, feelings, and emotions. What messages would you like to convey to the viewers?

My paintings actually don't come from personal experiences. In fact, I can't work, won't work if I am in my feelings or my emotions are leading me. Coming to the bare surface with nothing more than the materials that I will use for the piece is where I start, because I have no desire to allow my personal experiences to dictate my paintings, which cannot be avoided in my writing practice, although I try. I want to allow for a more authentic rendering of what the materials have to contribute. I am always mindful of the collaboration between me and my materials. So I have to leave space for both. This does not mean that there is no connection, but rather it is on the fringes. In some ways, I am not engaged with my thoughts and emotions intentionally. And if I think too much or lead from emotion, I stop. Again, my goal in my work is not to hold all of the space and narrate for the observer what I feel but to provide and hold space for what they feel, think, and connect with. I hope that my work lingers and that it draws the viewer into a conversation with the work, because I believe that they are picking up the conversation where I left off after the work has been finished. So the message is the one that they find in it. It makes the painting more when others have an interpretation, message, emotion, idea, or perspective. If this occurs, then my message has been conveyed to the viewer. I am really humbled by the personal experiences that people have when they engage with my work. It means that the collaboration has resulted in creating a connection beyond what my emotions could have dictated. I value and appreciate it. The fact that my work can be experienced on many different levels by many different people. I want my work to engage others in a conversation that starts at the surface but has the ability to move into deeper and deeper levels of self-exploration, understanding, acceptance, rejection, and revelation.

What aspect of your work do you pay particular attention to?

Colors, layers, shapes, balance, and having less control. And the world around me. I engage in many spaces. Cities, countryside, mountains, hills, forests, houses of worship, museums, parties. All of the spaces that hold opportunities to observe and be observed push me out of my comfort zone, and all of this helps develop my attention to the aspects of work. Perhaps I borrow a color from leaves on a tree. Or there is a sound that represents a color for me. Or a crowded room that has layers of all sorts, from jackets to hair to how people group themselves. To me, it is all colors, layers, shapes, and balance and is out of my control. 

Where do you find inspiration for your work, and what is your creative process like?

Inspiration is abundant from the natural world, dinner with friends, challenging conversations, sad and depressing moments, and the greatest joys that can be experienced. Having the opportunities to push myself to look beyond what I think that I know, how I see, and what I am able to understand in the world inspires me and my practice. My inspiration is found all around me. I am an observer and explorer who pays attention to what is going on around me. Finding inspiration, to me, is a matter of being open to possibilities that are without limits. Books, art, science, museums, conversations, laughter, smells, sound, silence, sleep. There is something in all of this, and I am more than willing and ready to embrace what is offered. Being open is essential to my creative process. It is what allows me to continue to evolve and grow. The collaboration with my materials is a great inspiration. Approaching my work from the perspective of a partnership with my materials creates a necessary level of respect during my creative process. I have found that by approaching my process this way, I can relax and trust my partner to bring their talents together with mine and create work that represents our combined abilities. I do not always know what, but I know how I will start, which materials and tools I will use, and the color palette. This does not mean that there is no intention. It means that I try not to predetermine the what but instead allow it to develop and unfold during the process because my practice varies from inside my studio to outside, which changes my process. Bringing in materials or engaging with natural materials. This has a profound effect on my practice. In my studio, it is a more controlled space, and I have more predictability. I may spill or mix the colors slightly off when replenishing, but I know what I am going to get. In the studio, I may add something after the painting has dried, spruce up the paint or change it altogether. I have the final say in this particular process. But when I move my studio outside, another dimension is added that changes the process altogether. I have to be 100% flexible, and I don't have the final say. 

You also quote the "en plein air" method, not as an inspiration for the subject of your paintings, but rather "to use the elements of nature as material and co-creator." Tell us more about this; what does it practically mean?

Instead of painting the landscape, or the concrete environment seen, I paint in collaboration between the artist and the elements en plein air. I use the natural elements that occur during and throughout the process of the painting process. Sand, wind, snow, ice, rain, and waves are collaborators in my painting process. I view them more than just as materials but as an active participant adding their own perspective to mine. All of the works are directly made with whichever element is active in the field. The works are dried slowly indoors to allow for the elements to imprint onto the work if it is impossible to dry outside. And there is no additional work during or after the drying process done by me. I want to avoid disrupting what has been left by the elements after drying. I know the color palette and materials that I want to work with when I begin. I do not know what, and I have to be flexible on the how because mother nature is unpredictable, so I have to go with what she presents me with. It is really special to work this way. I start off with one thing, but I am certain that when it dries, it will be something drastically different. When working with the natural environment, I am exploring, in some small way, what it means to adapt to the climate as an artist to produce works of art in a conversation with something completely out of my control, the weather. 

We witnessed a lot of changes in the art world and more generally, in our society in the past few years. Did you find any positive change in the approach people have to art now?

Art has always had an important role to play in how the changes in society are perceived, celebrated, dismissed, ignored, acknowledged, and seen. This is due in large part to the fact that artists and other creative practices engage in a dialogue with these changes long before the art world engages in it. With the fast changes from social justice, technology, and redefining social and sexual norms, the art world, like most institutions, has had to begin to come to terms with the role that it plays in how it contributes to the slowing down of progress towards a more equitable and justice world by the choices it makes in identifying and selecting who is an artist worth showing and what art is. Expanding the artistic canon to be more inclusive and representative beyond racial, sexual, and financial criteria, the art world has the opportunity to elevate and lift up the diversity of perspectives, approaches, and styles that include the diversity of race, gender, and financial means in a more intentional way that would be transformative for the future of art. 

Are you working on any new projects right now? Any exciting project or collaboration you would like to share with our readers?

Currently, I am working on a project focused on mirroring/transference. Exploring the idea of twins in the doubling of an image. I am especially interested in this idea as it pertains to my paintings because I live as a double image of another person, my identical twin, and I am fascinated by our sameness and both dramatic and slight dissimilarities that make us whole. So I am now working out the process that will provide the how so that I can find out the what of the project. This will be an in-studio process and a different creative process and practice for me, and that is challenging and exciting. I have a loose collaboration with Stig Marlon Weston, a Norwegian photo artist. It is loose because we are not trying to directly co-create a project together but rather be influenced/inspired in the same environment using our different practices and mediums en plein air. Weston's work is cameraless and pinhole camera-based. He approaches the project from the artist's inspiration of a much-painted and photographed landscape with his own interpretation of the landscape. And I explore the impact of the changing weather on the artistic process as well as its contribution to the artistic process' outcome. Exploring how to be adaptable in a changing climate as an artist. We spent one month above the Arctic Circle in Norway developing and creating our works which are ongoing projects in January 2022. Weston's "Inspired" and mine, "Weather Dependent" will be exhibited, "A Sudden Gust of Wind", in Norway in May 2023. I hope to continue this collaboration of en plein air to push myself further in this practice. Next year I will have some time to play and explore during a month-long Artist in Residency, and I am excited to see what advances, progresses, and happens during this time. My second collection of poetry is in the writing process with a goal to be ready for print late in 2023. 

Finally, what are your plans for the future? What do you think (and wish) the future holds for us?

The future is so far away. I like to think in the present because there is so much to do that future planning tends to be a distraction. That said, I plan to focus my energies on building out my practice and exhibiting more of my work to a broader audience. I am curious about technology in my practice and beginning the thinking process of what and how that may work. Currently I am based in Oslo, Norway but I feel the desire to spend time in the United States and connect with the creative community there. I will continue to play and explore ideas that I have in both writing and painting. I wish that our collective future will be one of transformation and reevaluation of how we can be better stewards of the natural world and of each other. Connecting to art and to humanity in deeper, more authentic ways will ensure that we see each other as part of the same family and that we would hold one another in greater respect. The future would hold greater compassion and appreciation, keys to building stronger ties that make the future worth looking forward to.