BIOGRAPHY
Louise Mayell is a visual artist from Kent, UK. Mayell was awarded BA (Hons) Art and Aesthetics from University of Wales Institute Cardiff in 2000, producing artwork in a range of media, including painting, ceramics, photography and installation.
She went on to complete a PGCE in Secondary Education in Art and Design, qualifying as a teacher in 2002. Mayell has gained many years experience teaching art specialisms and examination subjects in secondary schools across Kent, including courses in Fine Art, Textiles, Graphics and Photography.
In 2019 she completed studies in MA Photography at University for the Creative Arts, receiving a distinction for her fine art photographic work and research.
Mayell works as a Creative Workshop Tutor for University for the Creative Arts, teaching art and photography workshops to students from schools, colleges and youth clubs, as part of the University’s outreach programmes. She is also a trained Arts Award advisor. In 2021 Mayell completed a five month artist residency at Cobham Hall. She is now a teacher of A Level Art, Photography and Graphics at Cobham Hall school.
ARTIST STATEMENTS
ARTIST RESIDENCY - Cobham Hall School
Places of historical interest, often seem to hold within them, traces and fragments of a multitude of timelines. As artist in residence at Cobham Hall School, I have been greatly inspired by the beauty of the grounds and the atmosphere of the historic building.
The woodland that surrounds the site, transports one into a serene and almost magical sanctuary, where deer roam freely and ancient trees are preserved and sheltered. The school building itself, houses many fascinating spaces, along with paintings and artefacts that each have a history of their own.
My photographic experimentation thus far, explores themes of time, mystery and enchantment. Inverting imagery, allows the environments to be perceived in unexpected ways. The layering of scenes, evokes parallel timelines and the merger and collision of the natural world within manmade structures and spaces.
These current pieces are works in progress that form part of an ongoing project, that aims to portray change over time. Therefore, this online exhibition of works will transform and evolve, with new works added, as and when created.
RECENT WORK
Revisiting the place of one’s birth and childhood can conjure mixed emotions. Memories of childhood are evoked, or can even seem to be retained within objects or spaces. The documentation of my childhood surroundings has inspired work that has, not only a nostalgia for the familiar, but which also explores the duality of sensations that can occur, when revisiting a location from one’s past. By photographing and merging imagery taken on and around the council estate where I grew up, I aim to depict the contrast between the natural and manmade structures that, for me, remain as landmarks of memory within the landscape.
Electricity pylons and plants native to the marshes, form networks across the landscape like a web and a disused power station sustains a familiar backdrop in an ever evolving and changing environment. A small area of preserved woodland, is almost all that now remains of the site where I was born. These sights have become personally significant and symbolic, along with the buzz of crickets and electricity power lines, that provide a familiar hum that resonates and strangely soothes.
This recent work is a personal exploration and a search for the feelings of home, within an altered childhood habitat and a visual expression of a return to one’s roots.