Louise Bristow
Louise was born in London and studied painting at Gloucestershire College of Arts and Technology before moving to Brighton to study printmaking at Brighton University. She has lived in Brighton ever since, helping to set up and run a group studio called Maze, and later joining Phoenix Brighton.
Louise is inspired by urban landscapes and enjoys witnessing the varied ways that humans make and build things in different cultures; the specificity of an Egyptian bus shelter compared to a German one; the idiosyncratic design of a Polish kiosk or the Art Nouveau façade of a Viennese apartment block.
A large part of what drives her interest in the built environment is how its design and form communicates the values of the society that made it. Eastern Europe and the Communist experience hold a particular fascination for Louise. This isn’t due to any biographical connection, other than that she grew up during the end of the cold war, and the conflict between East and West was part of her ‘psychic landscape’.