Louise Weaver
Nature/Nurture
For the Melbourne artist Louise Weaver, art occurs in the spaces between thinking, making and living.
Soft music plays in the background, and there is a sense of calm as I walk into Louise Weaver’s studio, which is in her home. There is no separation between work and home, or work and life, for the multidisciplinary artist. The room is tidy and sparse, and the walls are bare except for two works leaning against the wall: Appaloosa (Ball Park) and In Falling Rain and Halflight (Fold), both from 2016.
Weaver has been an artist for more than 30 years, but there is surprisingly little information about her online. She might just prefer it this way. The softly spoken artist says that even early on in her career, her focus wasn’t on achieving gallery representation, though that has been a nice bonus. “It’s always been about making art,” she says.
Weaver lives in Prahran, not far from Melbourne’s CBD, but her work is very much informed by nature and the environment. Weaver was born in Mansfield, Victoria, and grew up on the land, on a “very isolated property” in the country. She was an astute observer of her surroundings from a young age, becoming very aware of the seasons and the Indigenous culture of the people who lived there. “Finding things like axe heads on the ground at school, that’s kind of moving and elemental. You feel like you’re just passing through, you don’t own the land […] not that we really did,” she says.
Our conversation circles around time, history, change and destiny, and Weaver ... Subscribe to read this article in full
