About Louisa's Art
Her art has been exhibited in twenty-seven solo and numerous group exhibitions since 1990.
“Art transports us, the Seers, into an alchemical crucible, where the base matter of our souls (Prima Materia), is gathered and melted down. It is here where some process of dissolving and transformation is initiated. The architecture of the exterior and interior landscapes is appropriated through colour, texture and then formed into a vessel of change”.
As a voracious reader and explorer of ideas, she has found it appropriate to use a wide range of expressive media: pen and ink drawings on rice paper, line and aquatint etchings, monotypes, collages, pastels, mixed media, conceptual art, texture art, mandala drawing, and environmental installations.
“I live on a Karoo farm, on the periphery of life, with a wonderful husband, my children and a pack of dogs. I live in a space where light and the experience of time are central features of daily existence.
As a psychologist, I have the privilege of sharing many interior spaces with others.
I love drawing faces as maps of experience;
patterns as the settings of archetypal existence;
words in images;
mandalas as blueprints of infinity;
conceptual art (installations) as a reflective tool of situated consciousness.”
Artist's Statement
Becoming "human" occurs in a circular movement away and towards the centre of our existence. We create a sacred space for ourselves into which we invite the Self to transform, just like a bird would build a nest for its young to hatch in – an ontological and cosmological reality. In this "becoming" human process, we form images of how we experience the world from the centre of our bodies, in the hermetic vessel of the mandala (microcosm).
Louisa Punt-Fouché, 1992 (D.Phil., Clin Psychology)
Since then (quotation above), I have realised that this process of "becoming" also implies reconnection with the whole (macrocosm); that is, to make the individual conscious of the illusion of separateness (of an ego-complex) and the release from oppression and narrowness in thinking that we are self-enclosed entities. This realisation leads to unconditional compassion as a natural expression of the solidarity of life, "being". It also unfolds as an understanding that every individual has a unique opportunity in their "becoming" of "being" to become and be a focal point/mirror in which the universe becomes conscious of itself.
These processes of becoming and being are happening simultaneously in two areas of life: our immediate world that exists in time and space, encompassed in eternal existence where there is no time and space. This understanding can be drawn, written, danced, and built-in circles informed by universal laws underlying all forms of "play", which is the basis of interrelatedness.
This possibility of circles within circles enables us to see it in a more fabulous frame of infinite connection that transforms everyday life into deeply significant aspects of "cosmic play" in which we are the actors and spectators.
We are the audience, watching ourselves as actors on the stage where there is a beginning and an end. Can there be any play without rules and a script? Can you play music without understanding the laws of harmony and how to play the instrument? Of course not. Only after the universal and inner laws of music or the archetypal theme in the play on the stage is understood is the freedom to express precisely what the individual feels. Such an individual expression is not a contradiction to the universal law of the world in which we live.
In that sense, the highest art for me is the bird (in the quotation above) that bursts into song, the Artist and poet that overflows with a free and spontaneous expression of an overwhelming inner experience. It is not for the sake of reward, acclaim or gain. It is called Lila, which means "universal play" in Buddhism. It is something that flows freely from us.
This Artist's statement attempts to verbalise my journey as an artist, poet and writer. I salute many fellow artists and writers along this personal pilgrimage that have informed, moulded and encouraged me. Inexplicably "the universal creative fire" has swept me along as a vehicle of expression where my life as a Jungian psychologist, yoga teacher and custodian for all the neglected aspects of this planet, children, women, animals, nature – became a work of art.
For this reason, I understand that every individual is a crystallisation of everything in the universe.
Maybe all the forces of the universe are necessary to create one human being or tree? But, on the other hand, it makes one wonder if it is not perhaps the highest achievement of the universe to become crystallised into the multi-dimensional and multi-faceted forms of conscious and unconscious life.
I live on a Karoo farm with my husband and two poodles. At the moment I think I make art and I write. Since the eighties, my art has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. I like to draw on rice paper, make etchings (dry point and aquatint), do monoprints, and play with mixed media. I also do environmental and community installations (mandalas).
I have published eleven books. The books are a compilation of my art and words that seem to happen together in the creative fire of everyday living.