Louise Despont was born in New York and earned her bachelor’s degree in art semiotics at Brown University and now lives and works in New York and in Bali, Indonesia. Since discovering the potential of working with pencil and architectural stencils on paper, Despont has adopted an intuitive process in which she allows her drawings to develop as she creates them, resulting in an almost devotional object comprised of dense colors and shapes.
Preferring to draw on ledger paper with preexisting lines, Despont sees a parallel between the mathematical accounting the paper was designed to organize and the way that her practice is an accounting of her time spent. Even when Despont creates large-scale installations — such as for her 2016 solo exhibition at the Drawing Center, New York — her practice remains personally labor intensive. Despont has exhibited her work internationally, and is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, Weston Prize Film Award, and two Creative Arts Council Grants. Having collected images for many years, Despont complements her broad visual references with her interest in energy and spirituality.
