Juliette Losq
Biography
Juliette Losq (b. 1978, London) studied Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, as well as English and History of Art at Newnham College, Cambridge, and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, London. She was awarded a PhD from the Arts University Bournemouth and the University of the Arts London in 2023.
Losq won the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2005 and the John Ruskin Prize in 2019 and received the Visitors’ Choice Award at the John Moores Painting Prize in 2014. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in collections including Southampton City Art Gallery, the Women’s Art Collection, the Newnham College Collection and the Royal West of England Academy.
Artist Statement
Juliette Losq PRI’s paintings explore the borderlands on the fringes of urban development, capturing the benign battles between man and nature. As flora reclaims spaces, concealing man-made structures with fresh growth, graffiti artists mark those same structures in an attempt to stake their own territorial claim. Her suburban landscapes are often interrupted by the suggestion of an unknown presence, with dark recesses allowing the viewer’s imagination to determine what might be lurking just out of sight.
Losq constructs physical models, like miniature theatres or dioramas, using layers of painted paper to suggest the accumulation of time and the gradual creep of undergrowth. She works repeatedly over the surface of her watercolours, with successive layers concealing and revealing imagery beneath.
Through their scale and complexity, her paintings challenge traditional perceptions of watercolour as a domestic-scale medium or one primarily used for preparatory sketches in the field.