Artist Statement 2026
Louise Fowler-Smith is an environmental artist, researcher, and the Founder and President of the Tree Veneration Society Inc. For decades, her practice and research have centred on the Sacred Tree and the ways in which veneration and honouring can lead to the protection of trees, particularly in countries such as India. Her work asks whether artists can inspire a re-envisioning of the environment through aesthetics, and whether a sense of sacredness can be conveyed through artistic vision without transplanting specific religious ideologies.
As Louise states:
“How we perceive and contemplate the land effects how we treat the land. If we see the land as separate from ourselves, we are less likely to honour and respect it.”
Louise taught at COFA UNSW for 30 years, where she developed some of the faculty’s earliest transdisciplinary environmental art courses. As an environmental artist, she has exhibited nationally and internationally, including a solo exhibition at the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle in France, Portraits d’Arbres Remarquables Illuminés, and two solo exhibitions in Italy. She continues to exhibit annually in group exhibitions and has participated in over 50 exhibitions since 1996.
Louise’s most recent work focuses on endangered and extinct plant species—plants that, in the 21st century, can no longer be encountered or photographed in the wild, largely due to human intervention, including anthropogenic climate change. Through sculpture and painting, she seeks to reveal their beauty, profundity, and loss, creating works that memorialise fragile and vanished forms of life.
Her research into venerated trees in India led to the publication of Sacred Trees of India: Adornment and Adoration as an Alternative to the Commodification of Nature (Cambridge Scholars Publishing). She has also published essays in international peer-reviewed journals and books, and presented her research at conferences in Australia, England, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, India, and the United States
Instagram: @louisefowlersmith
Website: louisefowlersmith.com
Facebook: louise.fowlersmith
