As an environmentally concerned artist, the most recent work of Louise Fowler-Smith focuses on the veneration of trees, a subject she was drawn to not only for the magnitude of its environmental significance, but its universal and pan-religious symbolic importance.

Louise’s investigation and resultant work has spanned two continents, Australia and India.

Her gallery based work concentrates on images of trees found predominantly in the arid zone of far western NSW, where she has paid particular interest to trees and bushes such as the Mulga,with its umbrella like form and isolated existence. To date the photographs she has taken are always of singular, lone trees, which, through her manipulation and placement, she manages to imbue with a poetic resonance. Her process is similar to that of a painter, whereby she layers or glazes light onto specially chosen trees, that may otherwise have been disregarded and ignored; concentrating on its individual qualities or personality. This process draws out the tree, making it special, individualistic, even sacred.

Her work focuses on notions of perception and in the belief that how we perceive and contemplate the land affects how we treat the land, and ultimately how we live within it. She believes that we are less likely to honour and respect the land if we see it as separate from ourselves. This perception remains pertinent irrespective of how the land is ideologically managed across cultural divides.