Common Exception

A is for Anxiety, Apples, Awe, Art 🍎

I’ve started a new zine project called Alphabet of Lou. I’m making each letter with my body too. As you do! 😆

Thanks for the inspiration ✨

Hi! I’m Louisa 👋

I’m a London based Australian collage artist.

I’ve been working on my Punk Joy manifesto the last few days (more on this soon!) and thought I’d share some of it with you. It’s my process but also what defines my work and my way of being in the world 💛

I Dance on Saturday

I’ve always loved to dance, and being lost in a crowd of moving bodies is my idea of bliss.

I remember finding the club as a teen and it was LOVE. So different to the world of ballroom dancing I’d grown up doing. I laugh and tell my kids I grew up in the ‘50s because country Australia… well, it was 40 years behind the rest of the world!

But as I moved through my life, especially becoming a mother, with less friends to go out with and little people to look after, sadly the spaces and opportunities to dance shrunk.

While the spaces I dance in have changed, my feeling and love for the bodies around me hasn’t.

One of the reasons I came back to dance was to heal my body and to reclaim space for me. Dancing is a healer! If you’ve been ill or experienced trauma, like I have, it can be hard to trust your body, or have a positive relationship with it. For me, dancing has been a big part of my healing journey. Knowing that I need dance at home to regulate my nervous system has been a big learning. Dancing alone, is better than not dancing.

Every Saturday, even when I don’t feel like it, I go to my dance class, where I forget about looking good on the dance floor and let my body take over with all the other glorious bodies there.

Last slide is from brilliant book Dance Your Way Home and a truth to live by: if you dance, you’re a dancer.

I choose to make joyful art, and I can honestly say it’s saved me 💛

I’ve tried making sad art before, but it only made me feel sadder. I want to be where the light, colours and patterns are ✨🌈

If you look really closely at this piece you can even see my fingerprints. I definitely had fun creating this one!