Louise Dougherty

Louise Dougherty (b. 1979, Great Yarmouth) is a landscape painter who lives and works in Norfolk. Working in oil, watercolour and thread, her art focuses on the Norfolk landscape. She studied at Winchester School of Art, completing an Art Foundation course in 1997–98 and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting from 1998 to 2001, followed by a PGCE at Cambridge University in 2002.

Painting in a realistic style, Dougherty seeks to evoke joy, calmness and meditation. She focuses on areas of the landscape, capturing every detail, while combining them with gestural mark-making and threads that enhance both the connection to the place and its historical roots. The atmosphere of her paintings is meditative. Standing in front of the work offers a deeper connection to the place and movement of the rural Norfolk landscape.

Her solo exhibitions include Routes and Reflections (2025) and Quiet Moments (2024), both at Suffolk Wildlife Trust in Lowestoft; Restore at No. 36 The Art Workshop Gallery, Gorleston-on-Sea (2023); and Quietly Discovered at the Anteros Arts Foundation, Norwich (2015). Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at Gray Area Gallery, Norwich (2026), and in exhibitions including the Society of Women Artists at the Mall Galleries, London (2023), the Women in Art Prize final at the Roundhouse, London (2024), Wells Art Contemporary at Wells Cathedral (2025), Wales Contemporary (2025), and Rooted in the Landscape at the Fisher Theatre Gallery, Bungay (2025). In 2024, she was a finalist for the Women in Art Prize. In 2026, she was shortlisted in two categories at the Holt Art Awards: the Sir John Hurt Art Award for Swaying Stillness and the Mannington Nature Award for A Promise of Gold.

She collaborated with the Broads Authority and Water, Mills and Marshes on Between River and Reed, shown at The Assembly House, Norwich, and Skippings Gallery, Great Yarmouth, in 2022. Her commissions include a mural for the X-ray department at James Paget University Hospital.