Louise Wellington/ The Art of War & Peace

For many years, Louise Wellington worked as a nurse before making a major career change in 1987. In 1990, she graduated from Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne with a degree in Creative Arts (Visual Art). Since then, her artistic practice has centred on the use of handmade paper, collograph prints, and found objects—primarily wood, stones, bones, feathers, and shells.

Until 1998, she worked as a freelance artist, delivering printmaking and papermaking workshops in schools, hospitals, clubs, day centres, and other venues, while also exhibiting and selling work across the North of England, Scotland, Japan, and Finland. In 1998, she began working full-time at a day centre for adults with learning difficulties, teaching art, photography, filmmaking, and drama. She retired in 2012 and has since continued to develop her practice from a home studio.

She participated in a group exhibition with two other artists in 2015 and is now returning to exhibiting more regularly. Currently, her work focuses primarily on weathered and aged wood, creating three-dimensional pieces inspired by landscape. The work being submitted, Spoils of War, was originally conceived in response to the Syrian conflict, though subsequent global conflicts have rendered its themes universally applicable.