Louis Forristal Art
<my 2025 portfolio! xxx
About the artist:
My personal art practice focuses on my Disabled identity and how i embody my work as a queer, disabled artist. I enjoy exploring the dynamic of invisible disabilities and how my personal experience plays into the poetics of body politics, (dis)ability, and the limits of the body. My most recent body of work has been comprised of a number of large scale canvases, with my Goldsmiths BAFA degree show having showcased my current work. This work has consisted of between 5, 10, and 50 meter long paintings. Within my practice i use painting, poetry, handwritten expressions, writing, and illustration within my work, which is often mixed media. Outside of my studio practice, i take my work with me using my sketchbooks. I find that this is an easy and concise way to get my thoughts and ideas onto the page whilst still being able to express my creativity and keep my art practice flowing, this is important to my practice as it is always ongoing and i rarely take breaks from my work. In the year of 2024 i averaged 12 main sketchbooks spread across the year, this being my day to day work.
I love to explore how the work takes on a life and rhythm of its own. Having consistency in my materials is important to me, in every piece of my current work from the past 2 years i have used the same paintbrush for all of my paintings. This paintbrush has been a part of my practice since i was 18 (now 21) and is a vital theme that i enjoy keeping in my work, even if nobody notices it. There are hidden easter eggs within my work over the past 5 years, common illustrations popping up in sketchbooks, paintings, and even on my body! My work and i are one with each other, i take the embodiment of my work to heart, using perhaps unconventional methods in my work in order to achive what i want out of a studio session.
![IMG_0967[1]_edited.png](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/53b76f_a9a365c010f046fa85c72a04407ae557~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_618,h_575,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/53b76f_a9a365c010f046fa85c72a04407ae557~mv2.png)
Why are my sketchbooks important?
My sketchbook work is one of the most important aspects to my everyday practice. It is integral to the maintenance of my art health that i have a continuous flow of work being produced, and this is what you will find in my sketchbooks. I am a firm believer that the work in a sketchbook doesn't have to be finished, pretty, or even coherent. If it works for you then that's all that matters! Art is subjective, in my practice it is the cornerstone to my studio work, but rarely done in the studio itself. More often than not you will find me working in my sketchbooks at 3AM scrawling down the details of my day and processing new ideas, concepts, and even opinions of people i socialized with. A sketchbook is whatever you want it to be, don't let the sketchbook police come along an tell you how to do your own art... I managed to learn that the hard way! Of course you need a sketch or two in there but a sketch can be anything, it doesn't have to be a pencil work, it can be a thumbnail, a poem, a draft of an angry letter you aren't going to send to your tutor, your deepest darkest feelings about whether you put the milk in first... Obviously this could go on forever but my point is that it is entirely up to you what you put in your sketchbook because its not like its going to serve anyone else better than the artist themselves! (That's you!)
Artist personal statement:
Entering the first year of my BAFA I had the goal of winning the turner prize. What I didn't expect is for my academic career to take on a life of its own and morph into my current practice. At one point art saved my life and now it has quite literally become the purpose of my life. I have grown into a community in which I have found not only friends but a creative family. I have found this in my community as an artist but also as a disabled person, truly embracing my identity as a queer, disabled creative. I don’t, however, just want to be any artist; I want to be a generation defining artist.
The physicality of my practice is integral to the deep understanding of what my practice is, what I want it to be, and what it needs to be. Working primarily with large scale canvas, sketchbooks, and poetry in my practice, I use conceptualised and radical identity-based work and play with the politics of the disabled body and identity, weaving intense and complex meaning, and playing with the concept of the visible invisible when it comes to the visceral self-reflexivity, fatalism, and absurdity that is the paradox of disability. My paintings are expressive in their scale and choice of mixed media using acrylics, watercolours, ink, written word, illustration, and physical installation in one work. I like to hide illustrations within my work that serve as easter eggs to past works and tell a story through multiple collections spanning the approximate decade that my practice has, so far, spanned. As a final work to be displayed at my degree show, I have chosen to explore the disabled body’s endurance in creating a 50-metre-long painting, set to include poetry, handwritten word, illustration, and multimedia endeavours.
I found the first year of my BAFA difficult, but with the incredible guidance & encouragement from not only my tutors but also my fellow peers, (which is an invaluable asset I hope to take with me into my further academic career) I’ve found and am developing the skills I needed to structure my practice and have developed them into a working scale model, tailored to my needs and identity as a disabled artist. During my BAFA I have learnt to adapt and to create my own structure and am now irrefutably more confident, adventurous, and flexible with my practice and by extension, my life. This has created unimaginable freedoms for me alongside having my own space to express and find myself, I have found a place where I can be authentically autistic, disabled, and unmasked self in my studio and on my canvas. In my exploration of what it is to be an artist, I found not only myself, but something to live for, something to exist for, something to die for. Art has quite literally saved my life in more ways than one and has provided a solace and almost sacred space within my being that I legitimately believe I would not be here without. Art has taught me to explore the narrative of life, its ok to be wrong, everyone gets it wrong sometimes and paint isn’t the end of the world. Life with art has become a vessel that revolves around creativity, a hub of art practice, theory, and understanding. We are so interwoven with one another’s identities that I doubt you could separate me from my art on a molecular, chemical, and spiritual level.
That’s not to say that it isn’t difficult and that I don’t still face and overcome artistic obstacles within my practice. Solving an uncooperative painting isn’t the only concern there is within the context of the work; staging, lighting, contrast with the wall, position and angle of the work, and of course the ethics of the work must be considered. I can become so emotionally invested within my work that it becomes a struggle to contemplate the inevitable leap to the bloodied jaws of commercialisation. My body of work has become so expansive that I realise I will have no choice but to release it into the wilds of commercial galleries. However necessary this is for the growth of both myself and my artistic endeavours, it is still an admittedly conflicting feeling to sell my own experiences. I find the prospect of commissioned art a daunting concept, there is an authenticity to my work that I am rather attached to that makes my art unique to me, nobody has experienced my life and therefore nobody can create the same art. Yes, they could replicate how it is painted but they couldn’t replicate the experience of it nor the experience of my life. It is uniquely mine. It’s an incredibly intimate and controlled part of my practice right down to the colours I choose to paint with, stemming from a feeling of emotional authenticity. I can’t tell people how to paint my life or my experiences and have it still remain an authentic representation of my work and experience as a queer, disabled artist.
Art doesn’t necessarily have to be good from a technical perspective. To me, it’s more about what my art makes you feel. A good artwork makes you feel something. Whether that be anger, disappointment, confusion, joy, misery, happiness, boredom, indifference, melancholy, belonging, security, unease, etc… I find the work of Tracey Emin and Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” incredible examples and inspirations behind my exploration of the disabled identity and the politics of the body within both my written work and studio practice. I use my own artwork to explore my identity and have a voice beyond distinguishable language, creating a community of interlinked people expressing themselves through the embodiment of art.
There is what I imagine to be a goblin inside of my soul that gnaws at my artistic carcass. The authentic artistic conundrums I find myself in more than speak volumes to my artistic identity. I often illustrate this goblin in my sketchbook to be the villain when it has so often been the reasons for many of my successes. It pushes me further out of my comfort zone and into new, exciting, and sometimes frightening leaps of faith into my art and life. I make it a point in my work to be brutal and ruthless with my authentic portrayals of my embodied experiences and endeavours. This can sometimes be a barrier to my commercialisation of my art as I find it difficult to part with specific works that are of significant emotional and instinctual value to me.
Exploring my academic opportunities is important to me and I want to not only survive but thrive as an artist and find a commercial home for my art. I live for people to be able to look at my work and know it’s mine and still be commercially desirable whilst fulfilling my creative identity. I have a goal to continue my studies and take my academic career, research and art to a PhD level, having a bucket list goal to win the turner prize, teach, and use my work to advocate. Previously, I have curated and marketed a community group exhibition called “Covid Creations” in Lees Library in which I brought together artists of all ages who had used art to cope during the lockdown period, interested in giving them a voice on how lockdown impacted them. This had involved networking with Oldham Council and the individual artists, as well as the library itself in order to secure the exhibition space. Within my networking efforts, I used both local newspaper and radio platforms to publicise the exhibition as well as utilising social media. This was an indispensable experience that not only gave me intense joy but also the chance to communicate and meet with other artists in my local area and give back to my community.
There is a time for change upon not only my practice but the arts community as a collective. Change starts with yourself. Continuing my practice to a higher level is a delicate but radical opportunity to grow as an artist and create an institution of advocacy and understanding for the disabled, queer identity. One pivotal stepping stone in my studio practice was when I realised that I don’t see myself as an autistic, queer, or disabled artist represented in the wider art world. I feel studying for and progressing in my academic career would equip me with further skills to enable me to better advocate for the millions of people within my communities and create the artistic progression I would need to begin to contribute to the expansion of the disabled identity’s exploration and exposure to art.
