Living in locations as varied as England, Texas and British Columbia has given Louise Smith plenty of inspiration for her landscapes.

To create her paintings Louise first stretches a piece of silk in a hoop. She then renders background elements of the composition using a small brush and silk paint, a liquid which behaves much like a dye. Control and planning are important at this stage because dark colours cannot be painted over with light ones and mistakes are irreversible.

Once the painting has been fixed with an iron the hoop is transferred to her sewing machine, where using free motion machine embroidery she creates textured foreground elements such as grasses, trees, branches, bark, and moss. Some pieces also feature hand sewing. The effect is somewhere between two- and three-dimensional and with a glow and sheen unique to the medium of silk and thread.

Louise is a member of Art Focus Artists’ Association and Fiber Arts/Mixed Media and lives in Port Moody, British Columbia, with her husband.