This Painter Changed How I Look at Art

Why It Matters

By teaching artists to isolate and re‑contextualize visual details, Joanelli’s method cultivates deeper observational skills and fresh creative narratives, reshaping how audiences experience and produce art.

Key Takeaways

• Artist uses cropped details to reinvent classic paintings.
• Light manipulation shapes narrative in her solo exhibitions.
• She prioritizes material and visual analysis over artist biographies.
• Cropping creates visual ambiguity, prompting deeper viewer interpretation.
• Teaching method emphasizes observation, composition, and technical fundamentals.

Summary

The video features a conversation between host Gary and contemporary painter Louise Joanelli, who shares how she teaches drawing by dissecting existing artworks.

Joanelli explains that she collects postcards of museum pieces, then crops a small, visually compelling segment to use as a reference. She emphasizes material—vellum, translucency, light—and disregards biographical labels, focusing on composition, color, and texture.

She cites a formative Bosch exhibition where each painting was lit by a unique LED, inspiring her solo shows that manipulate light sources. Notable anecdotes include her fascination with Adrien Kf’s asparagus on vellum and describing her work as a “Trojan horse” that hides subversive ideas.

The approach underscores that learning art is as much about observing details as creating them, encouraging artists and viewers to seek vitality in isolated forms and to interpret works without textual bias, a practice that can deepen engagement and originality.

Original Description

Most of us look at a painting, a picture, or a scene and see the whole thing. Artist Louise Giovanelli looks at a painting and sees the one detail nobody else notices — then makes an entire canvas out of it.

In our second episode of How We Art, we ventured into the storage rooms of White Cube Bermondsey (@WhiteCubeOfficial), where they kindly displayed several of Louise’s paintings — the perfect backdrop to our conversation and “workshop.” With postcards, colored pencils, and some drawing paper in hand, we dove into how Louise looks at the world and how that finds its way into her art.

Summary:

00:00 Intro

00:31 Louise's postcard collection and how she learned to look

02:55 Drawing challenge begins

03:55 The Hieronymus Bosch show that changed everything

05:29 What to look for in a museum

06:31 Why wall text gets in the way

07:35 The power of cropping

12:29 Why cropping became Louise's signature approach

14:46 Describe your work in three words

16:36 Gary reveals his final drawing

18:38 Why art matters

19:10 What's next for Louise

How We Art is the series that takes you inside the art world and demystifies how to see, how to make, and how to experience everything art has to offer. This is episode two. Let us know what you think in the comments.

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