Louie Lines is a Greater Manchester based painter born a short walk from what is now the Hockney Museum in Yorkshire. An enthusiastic self-taught painter working from an old cotton mill and home studio, Louie paints almost daily, often in watercolour or ink but also in acrylic, oil and other media. Louie continues to work experimentally.

Offered an art degree place, Louie did not imagine being able to support herself as an artist. Instead she worked to improve services for marginalised people as an innovation and developmental manager. She maintained a connection with artistic creation via marketing design, film making and events with communities – often in her own time.

Louie is focused on landscape and nature. The deeply atmospheric Pennines, moorland and mill towns, have provided an enduring inspiration. Both have bleak and regenerative phases. Her landscapes reflect the terrain of regular walks, but also bring in imaginary viewpoints and drama. Elevated scenes reflect life as a child above moorland with a valley view. As an adult today the sense of space, freedom, and unthreatening isolation is very hard to achieve. Louie looks for haze, shadow, variation and enhancing distortion and to gradually tame a painting to create a path or focal point. Occasionally the work tips into abstraction or stylised representations.

Louie has recently been selected for both the Blackburn and Bolton museum Open exhibitions and shows in biannual studio group events.