About

LOUISE STUBBERUP

Artist Profile

I work with paintings without a predefined image.

I don’t begin with a concept or a plan.
I begin in a state — something unsettled, something that needs to move.

I don’t try to define it before I start.
If I do, the work is already closed.

⸻

I paint with my hands.
Only black.
No tools.

This is not an effect or a style.
It is a way of removing distance.

There is nothing between my body and the surface.
No brush to soften the contact.
No tool to control or translate the movement.

What happens, happens directly.

⸻

The work is physical.

Pressure, hesitation, force, repetition — all of it is visible.
Not as something added, but as something that cannot be removed.

The surface holds the entire process.

⸻

I don’t work on clean or neutral materials.

I choose canvas, paper, cardboard, and found materials that already carry something —
wear, damage, folds, stains, history.

I am not interested in starting from zero.

The surface already has a condition, and I enter into it.

⸻

I don’t separate what was there before from what I add.

It becomes one thing.

⸻

Nothing is cleaned up.

Edges stay torn.
Fibers stay visible.
Marks are not corrected or balanced.

There is no final adjustment that makes the work “right”.

⸻

I don’t work toward an image.

If something recognizable appears, it is not because I planned it,
but because it emerged through the process.

I don’t try to hold onto it.
I let it shift, distort, or disappear.

⸻

I don’t aim for expression in a traditional sense.

I am not trying to show a feeling.

I am working through something
and the work is what remains of that process.

⸻

The work is finished when I decide to stop.

Not when it is resolved.
Not when it is polished.
But when continuing would turn it into something else – something that’s not me.

⸻

In a culture that constantly refines, filters, and perfects images,
I move in the opposite direction.

I leave things as they are.

Not because they are complete,
but because they are true to what has happened.

⸻

The work does not explain.

It does not guide.

It does not resolve.

⸻

It stands as it is