DRAWN HOME TO NATURE

With a childhood spent hiking up Bickerton Hill, it was only natural artist Louisa Boyd would find inspiration in the Sandstone Ridge

- Liz Hull

Louisa Boyd may have moved away from Bickerton Hill, but this pretty corner of Cheshire always called her back. She missed the hill and its woodland so much after moving away as a student, she would return to paint it regularly. Years later, she could resist no more and bought a cottage in Bickerton’s shadow.

Louisa now works from a bespoke wooden studio, built in that cottage’s garden, just a stone’s throw from the National Trust-owned ridge which kick-started her art career 20 years ago. Also a part-time art teacher at The Queen’s School, in Chester, she has been nominated for the prestigious John Ruskin Prize and exhibited her pieces around the world – think USA, Australia and Europe – as well as a number of times at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. Her latest work includes paper relief sculptures and prints inspired by Plato and the elements – fire, earth, water, air and ether, the mysterious fifth element thought to relate to the world beyond our own. They have most recently been on show at Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, in London, and the Ty Pawb gallery, Wrexham, and Louisa has exhibitions in Derbyshire and West Sussex planned for later this year.

‘I suppose I was really lucky. I grew up in Farndon and most weekends my sister and I would get dragged up Bickerton Hill for a walk by my mum and dad,’ says Louisa, 40. ‘It was part of my childhood routine and pretty idyllic looking back.