Artist Henry Louris
Henry Louris is a painter and printmaker currently working in the Northeast United States. His work explores the hidden anxieties of suburban life through dreamlike vignettes.
Among his inclusion in various group exhibitions, Henry has been featured in two New American Paintings issues and has been awarded an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. He is currently completing his MFA at Ohio State University.
"My paintings explore psychological fragmentation as a stress response. Figures straddle interior and exterior worlds, unsure whether to remain hidden or engage with reality. Their indecision keeps them stuck in hypnagogic vignettes as a form of dissociation, perpetually searching for solutions and longing for freedom. Moments of magical realism and abstraction reinforce the dreamlike quality of these spaces, as separate events collapse into each other and occupy the same canvas. My recent paintings explore bodies and everyday objects in both real and fantastical aquatic settings, each offering a cross-section of intimate, private, and public space. The paintings have an essentialized, disquieting quality, inverting symbols usually associated with comfort—sunlight can be menacing, domestic spaces can be isolating, and recreational activities can be dangerous. My practice helps me process moments of uncertainty and navigate the contradictory experience of being alive."
Tell us a little about yourself (where you are from) and your background in the arts.
I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, spending most of my time around Bde Maka Ska and biking to Punch Pizza. My first attempts at drawing came in 1st grade, when I started making fictional newspapers to distribute to my classmates. I wrote fake headlines, drew the accompanying press “photographs,” and had a comic strip called “Clown’s Golf” (can you guess what it was about?). I sold them to my classmates for a penny after my teacher talked me down from selling them for a dime. I would also render countless imaginary cities in my sketchbook and draw surrealist narrative scenes of rabbits as an alternative to keeping a diary. I started to lose touch with art in middle school before I accidentally got placed in an advanced drawing class in my sophomore year of high school. It was a sink or swim situation, and I thrived in the class, reinvigorating my love for drawing. It was around this time that I discovered Käthe Kollwitz and Francisco de Goya who remain my heroes to this day.
I went to Boston University to study painting and printmaking for my undergrad; however, my mental and physical health quickly started to deteriorate. It was a difficult time for me, and I became fascinated with various forms of mysticism, specifically Kabbalah and Christian mysticism, as a way to cope with the difficulties I was facing. These spiritual topics began to infiltrate my work, with the prevailing question: were these practices helpful, or were they becoming compulsive? I’m still unsure if my paintings from this period were sincere or satirical, but they represent superstition as a form of madness we fall into during periods of desperation. My paintings were becoming increasingly abstract at this time as opposed to the narrative figuration I grew up loving.
After a few years working various jobs and showing my paintings when I could, I returned to academia to pursue my master’s at Ohio State in 2024. I resumed painting representationally with a sustained focus on hypnagogic imagery. The images are more quotidian now, indicative of dreams close enough to reality where one might wake up wondering if they were real.
What kind of work are you currently making?
I’ve been painting a lot of swimmers this year. I love the ability that aquatic imagery provides to fragment the figure in a non-violent way. Being submerged in water is a rare time when the boundaries of one’s body start to feel less defined. Water is both dangerous and nourishing, and it allows for so much ambiguity. Are the figures hiding? Are fleeing? Are they free? It’s this tension between tranquility and danger that excites me.
What is a day like in the studio for you?
I’m a late-night worker. There’s a certain magic that occurs after 2am which is conducive to painting, as the world is quiet when everyone else is asleep. The delirium that comes from this schedule is beneficial to my practice, as being in the studio starts to feel like dreaming while awake. The consequence of working this way is that I usually get a late start to the morning and arrive at the studio deeper into the afternoon.
I’m always eager to sink my teeth into a painting and don’t like to spend too much time on prep work. I start with loose sketches, which I’ll occasionally project onto the canvas if the anatomy is particularly difficult, keeping things as general as possible with the knowledge that I’ll shift everything around multiple times throughout the painting process. This year, I’ve switched to using acrylic for the initial layers to speed up the blocking in stage. I never feel like I’ve truly begun until I’m a few layers in, and the accumulated marks are interacting with each other in unexpected ways. I try to have large and small works going simultaneously, so I can shift between them depending on my mood. Some days, it’s just easier to work delicately, and vice versa.
When I’m stuck on a painting, I’ll build frames or stretcher bars. The wood shop can be a source of solace when dealing with creative blocks, since the steps are clear-cut and straightforward. I was never very handy growing up, so it’s rewarding to have moments of feeling capable, even if I’m still a complete novice overall!
What are you looking at right now and/or reading?
I’m really into 20th century American figurative painting right now, particularly George Tooker. He represents an overlooked parallel movement to Modernism which was deceptively “classical” while actually being quite uncanny and weird. His work is rich with inner turmoil in relation to urban life and sexuality, and they constantly remain mysterious to me. I’ve been over to the Columbus Museum of Art to see his painting “Cornice” a few times recently along with some great George Bellows pieces.
I just finished Ray Bradbury’s short story, “Skeleton” this week. Before that, I read "Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment" as part of a book club with a few friends. I’m a much slower reader than I used to be, so I try to balance dense theory with fiction to keep myself from burning out.
Where can we find more of your work? (ex. website/insta/gallery/upcoming shows)
Website: https://www.henrylouris.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/henrylouris/
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