Louise McLaren is a designer maker producing paper cuts and screen prints. An Architect by training, she studied at The Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, part of Robert Gordons University in Aberdeen and practiced in rural Perthshire before branching into paper craft and following her passion for making handcrafted objects. Louise is fascinated by the contradiction and contrast that is implicit in the craft of paper cutting; a single sheet of paper which, using only the simple notion of positive and negative space, is transformed into a delicate, highly intricate, patterned image. Louise seeks to capture and celebrate the human inner voice in her work; the inherent thread of emotions and dreams that runs through each of us, defines us and tells of our desires, experiences and life. She uses fragments of text capturing these thoughts as the starting point of each design. Louise’s paper cutting skills are entirely self taught and her choice of paper and cutting tool has been won through a process of trial and error. She draws and cuts each piece by hand, cherishing the character and idiosyncrasies that appear in her work as a result of the process and firmly believing that’s where the beauty and individuality of hand crafted objects lies.