Practice, Practice,
Practice.
Drawing sits at the root of Susan's work. She is interested less in careful academic representation than in gesture, attitude, presence and relationship: the quick marks that catch how people stand, move, gather, turn towards one another or retreat. Her sketchbooks are working places rather than polished objects, holding notes, reflections, samples, experiments and the beginnings of ideas.
Textile, Language and Observation
Textiles give Susan a material language through which those observations can be developed. She works with dyed, painted and printed cloth, screen printing, stitch, collage, layering and three-dimensional possibilities. Her work often carries a strong sense of narrative, but it rarely explains itself directly. It is more interested in human connection, memory, interaction and the emotional charge held within materials and marks.
You Need Hands
In recent years, Susan has also turned attention towards ageing, the body and her own hands: the hands that have drawn, stitched, taught, gardened, made and held a life’s experience. This concern with time, vulnerability and physical presence now feeds naturally into her work with old family photographs and remembered lives.
