Louise McRae - Salty Silk, 2026

Louise McRae was born into a farming family on the Kaipara Harbour. With her three older brothers nearly a decade older than her, she spent a large amount of time alone “riding horses on that coastline, imagining.”

Many years later, McRae was introduced to painting and developed a largely self-taught practice of assemblage works of paintings broken apart into pieces. She was interested in the space between and the freedom of the reassembled material. McRae then went on to complete a Master of Fine Arts at the Whitecliffe College of Art and Design in Auckland.

Realising a love for working with form, McRae has moved into creating sculpture, describing the search for form as a constant learning experience. She has not, however, moved away from her painterly roots, and instead describes herself as a painter first with an interest in form.

“Fundamental to my process-based practise is materiality. Material is what it is, it is here, now, completely present. With its particular strengths and limitations. I am interested in pushing the material, toward and beyond its boundaries, pulling back just at the moment it collapses. Capturing the moment it teeters on the edge of collapse, the energy and the urgency of the making is contained within the work. Inventing process, by using material in an unusual way, develops a tension between honesty and the unexpected. Not all is as it seems.”

McRae has participated in solo and group exhibitions, and has been a regular finalist in the Wallace art awards.