Check Out Louise Cutler’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Louise Cutler.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Drawing has always come naturally to me. As a child, I drew constantly. In grade school, my desks were filled with pencil and crayon drawings of homes, cars, playgrounds, and people. I loved making images using clay and would often create entire worlds. My imagination was my way of escaping some of the harsh realities of life growing up in the early sixties in urban America. “Even as a Child, I knew art would forever be a part of my life.”

I loved school, not because of the education I was receiving, nope. But because there you had an unlimited supply of paper, crayons, clay, pencils, paint, the list goes on. This was back in the day when schools supplied you with everything. I even went to summer school, not because I had to, but because I could use all the school art stuff.

In high school, I was in a studio arts program for my first two years and did exceptionally well. I was chosen to participate in a summer arts program for exceptional high school art students. The program paid students to study at a college and produce art over the summer. There I began to blossom as an artist but then my life took a sudden turn, my mother transferred me to another school and destroyed my life. Hey, I was a teenager, and lots of things destroyed my life, ha.

At my new school, I could not take art classes, I was considered a late enrollee. So I was placed in a tailoring major. It was a vocational high school so you had to have a major because you graduated with a trade. After high school, I left my artistic talents behind and started College. My Mother persuaded me to pursue a career in nursing. This didn’t go over well considering I hated hospitals. So of course I never made it into the nursing program.

My older brother, who was an artist, suggested while at school I take some art courses while figuring out what I wanted to become. I ended up staying at my two-year Jr. College for three years taking everything they had to offer in the field of art. So by the time I graduated with my Associate degree I had become the only one in Malcolm X Jr. College history to graduate with an associate’s degree in Fine Art.

After that I pursued other schools, UIC Chicago, and The Academy Of Merchandise and Design, and worked at various jobs in retail, designing gowns and prom dresses for people. I was even a street portrait artist in downtown Chicago. I loved being a part of the transient art scene. I could sketch out a person within ten minutes. I learned that there was an art to quick sketching on the street, “people were not interested in us capturing the absolute truth, but just enough to make it appear as reality”, this was different from what I had learned in school.

But it wasn’t until my sister convinced me to volunteer at Douglas Park for the Chicago Park District After school program that I found my purpose. I loved working with young people. In 1997 I retired from the working world and became a full-time artist. Since then I have only worked in the area of art-related pursuits. I have worked and taught workshops for the Evanston Fine Art Center, Noyes Cultural Art Center, Bemis School of Arts, BIPOC, CSU, and others.

It is the journey that makes us who we are. I feel my work reflects my life not in the usual way one’s life is reflected in glowing realistic detail but in a more spiritually revealing “take my hand and journey with me” through painting kind of way. “ I consider one’s art an extension of one’s life. My work, whether it’s painting, drawing, writing, gardening, or performing, is a visual or written translation of my life, my feelings, people I have encountered, places I have been, and things I have seen.”

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Is there such a thing as a smooth road? When God gives you a vision, dream, or purpose, He does not shrink it to fit you, He stretches/grows you to fit the dream, vision, or purpose. Growing is not always an easy or smooth transition, but it is necessary. As a Black American woman growing up and becoming an artist was not considered a career move. Artists in the black community were thought of as hobbyists, not employed professionals.

Being a professional artist was frowned upon. It was thought to lead to starvation, drugs, and living on the streets. And that was just my family’s opinion. Not to mention I was seen as just plain different, the anomaly in the midst of what was considered normal people. I also had a son at an early age, this was not an easy road. But I am grateful for my family, I was still able to go to college and pursue my dreams with their help and support.

So yes there were struggles and hardships. Raising a child and pursuing your goals as a young single mother is hard but it is doable. I had help but it was not always available. My eldest son is amazing and I would not have traded my life with him for all the smooth roads in the world.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a visual artist, I paint and sculpt, and as a curator, I enjoy organizing and presenting exhibitions of not only my work but other artists, and I enjoy writing and singing. I am most known for my paintings and sculptures. My work is often figurative with a semi-realistic approach. I love people, faces, and the cloth human form. Two of my favorite activities when out of town are people-watching and taking pictures of people.

Over the years I have experimented with several different mediums and styles. My skills as an artist range from working in pastel, oil, acrylic, clay, gliding, and mixed media art to playwriting, music, and drama. I consider myself a multimedia, multicultural artist. “I believe true Artist experiments because he/she is in search of his/her voice”. My desire for peace and harmony is echoed throughout my work.

Something hard to achieve growing up in a family of nine. “I believe the purpose of my art is to bring peace and serenity into a world where chaos has become the norm”. My paintings are figurative with nature as the backdrop. Each figure is draped in lovely garments that are transformed into divinely beautiful works of art through the use of acrylics and gilding.

I chose the art of gilding because of its illusional effect of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. (Gilding is the process of affixing tissue-thin sheets of precious or common metals to a carefully prepared surface using a special adhesive to create a lustrous metallic finish. Gilding is an ancient craft that dates back to Egyptian and Biblical times. Gilding was very popular in Italy during the middle ages, until the late Renaissance. It was used to highlight religious paintings and carvings.)

When I use metal leaf it is to enhance and highlights the illusion of simplistic grandeur. I purposely leave out the face; “I find faces irrelevant to most of my work. A face would only add complications for the viewer, my paintings are meant to be enjoyed in their entirety from the form out, not just for the sake of a face.” A lot of my ideas and style references are often from my imagination, old photos that I have purchased at estate sales or flea markets, late European masters, and the Asian culture. “I find this eclectic blend of cultures and forms fascinatingly refreshing.”

I leave the negative space in my painting to their own devices to form as they please. I find when left alone they create a nice sense of balance and fluidity. I am most proud of my family, my three amazing sons who are my greatest creation, and my husband who has continued to enhance my journey. I feel the thing that sets my work apart is the desire to continually develop and explore my craft, through travel, classes, books, and people.

This keeps my work fresh. But I find it’s my love and interest in humanity that gives my work the ability to connect with people on a more spiritual and emotional level. “One of my greatest desires as an artist is to see all of the great masters works I have ever read about or have seen in classes throughout my life. This coupled with traveling the world would mean everything to me. To be able to experience their humanity, (the masters) firsthand in the environments where they lived and created. Breathing the air they breathed and seeing the world mostly as they saw it. ”

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
As a youth, I can’t say I was interested in anything other than art and candy. Growing up I was quiet and mostly kept to myself. I was considered a daydreamer. I liked drawing and making things with the clay I would bring home from school. The neighborhood I grew up in was amazing. In the eyes of the world,d me and the other kids in my neighborhood were poor, but over the years I found we were richer than most of the people in America because the other kids on my block had imagination.

We played outdoors a lot, playing sports and other childhood games. Baseball was my favorite, I was one of the best players on the block. Strike-em-out was my game. It was a version of baseball that only required a ball, a glove, a wall, and a bat. But I do come from a family of nine so life was always lived. People often think I am an extrovert, but I tell them, only when I have to be. In a large family, you learn to navigate your introverts. But I truly enjoyed taking time with drawing and my imagination. I am still a lot like that now.

Pricing:

• Paintings range from $900-15,000
• Bronze sculptures Range from $4,800-20,000

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.louisecutlerstudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louisecutlerstudio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LouiseCutlerStudio
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lcutlermusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LouiseCutlerStudio
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/louise-cutler-847144315
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/@louisecutlermusic 

Image Credits
Black Sparrow Media and  John Robson