A5 (14.8 x 21 cm) single postcard featuring Untitled (169) by Louise Hopkins part of the National Galleries of Scotland Collection.

In this piece Hopkins has applied ink by hand to a map of the world, leaving circles around the names of oceans and countries so they are still visible. Hopkins regularly makes use of pre-existing surfaces including maps, song sheets, comic books, furnishing fabrics and magazine pages, painting over and partially obscuring them so they take on a new meaning.

Her paintings onto maps question the certainty of the original image so our understanding of geography is disrupted. Hopkins frequently uses painterly, expressive marks in this way to bring an otherworldly quality to the mass-produced images that surround us in daily life.

Louise Hopkins (born 1965) is a British contemporary artist and painter who lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland.