Louise graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 2011 with a BA (Hons) in Visual Communications, specialising in Photography. Growing up in Orkney, she had a keen interest in art since a very young age, proudly bringing home from school many a toilet-roll sculpture or tattie-print masterpiece. After completion of a course in Portfolio Preparation at the Orkney College in 2007, Louise held her first solo exhibition of photography at The Reel in Kirkwall, Orkney. In 2008 she won a photography competition run by Young Scott, where her photos were hung in the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness.

Over the years, Louise has had the honour of creating visuals for many artists including multi award-winning folk band Lau, 2015 IBMA Momentum Award winners The Lonely Heartstring Band, Canadian Folk Music Award winners Genticorum, and multi-award winning Scottish trio Talisk, BBC Performing Arts Fellow and Horizon Award nominee Rosie Hood and BBC Radio Scotland’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year winners Robyn Stapleton, Rua MacMillan, Dan Thorpe and Claire Hastings, as well as Highland Young Musician of the Year Graham Mackenzie. FATEA awards Male Vocalist of the year Alistair Ogilvy and Scott Wood of UK chart-topping band Skerryvore, Jazz musician and prolific producer Euan Burton, award-winning English singer and fiddle player Bella Hardy and powerhouse Scottish fiddle band Session A9. She has photographed many an MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Award winner, including Musician of the Year and Scots Singer of the Year Iona Fyfe, Gaelic Singers of the Year, Kim Carnie of Manran and Mischa Macpherson, who was also a winner of the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award, and three-time winner of Best Singer Siobhan Miller, who also won Best Traditional Track at the 2018 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

Her 2015 project 'Out of My Own Light' was the first to marry her passion for music and visual art. It depicts the story of her late Grandmother, Margaret Bichan (nee Tait), who travelled to Canada in 1950 to solve a dilemma of the heart. After retracing her Grandmother's steps, Louise wrote music to accompany a body of photography and working with photographer and book maker Lachlan Young, she created a short run of hand bound art books.

As well as photography, Louise enjoys working in various creative mediums including printmaking, painting and drawing, design, embroidery, stop-motion animation and alternative print techniques, such as cyanotype.


Past exhibitions

  • Out of My Own Light (solo exhibition) Lyth Arts Center, Lyth, Wick, Summer 2015
  • Out of My Own Light (solo exhibition) Pier Arts Center, Stromness, Orkney, April/May 2015
  • ‘New Ground’ Orkney Art Graduates 2011-12 exhibition Pier Arts Center, Stromness, Orkney, Feb/March 2013
  • The Best of the Scottish Degree & Diploma Shows Six Foot Gallery, Glasgow, July/Aug 2011
  • GSA Degree Show Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, June 2011
  • GSA Visual Communications Work in Progress The Lighthouse, Glasgow, Jan 2011
  • Young Scot Winter Art & Photography exhibition Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, March 2008
  • Four Seasons (solo exhibition) The Reel, Kirkwall, Orkney, Sept 2007
  • Orkney College of Art exhibition Kirkwall, Orkney, June 2007
Using Format