Louise Hopkins (born Hertfordshire, England, 1965) is known for her paintings and drawings made on materials such as furnishing fabric, graph paper, sheet music, magazine and catalogue print and maps. In her work on maps, Hopkins employs pencil, ink and paint to alter boundaries and transform territories and thereby challenge our perceptions of geography and highlight the historical and political forces that shape it.

Unable to travel internationally during 2013, Hopkins instead explored from her studio what it means to experience other countries remotely. She invited a number of the artists participating in Below another sky to send her objects from their home countries or residency destinations and used this material to inform new work on paper and in print. The final prints – both Landscape with Red, Blue and Black and the blind embossed etching Arrangement with Moving Parts – developed in direct response to conditions of real and imagined travel.

‘Landscape with Red, Blue and Black was developed from a pencil and watercolour painting. The composition evolved through the interplay of the red, blue and black forms and their relationships to a hand drawn grid. Once scanned, the artist began a process of duplicating, flipping and mirroring the image to form a much larger gridded structure. Adobe Photoshop was used to further manipulate and modify this structure and ensure the continuity of the grid structure. The artist has produced a print that simultaneously retains the subtlety of the original pencil and watercolour painting and reveals the transformations made to the work within a complex, hybrid structure.’[1]