Sue was a graphic designer and art teacher in her professional life, working freelance for many educational bodies including English Heritage and the National Trust. She then worked as Publicity and Promotions Manager for West Sussex Library Service for 19 years and returned to painting and printmaking after taking early retirement.
The physicality of painting excites her. It is in the process, the materials, the ‘doing it’ rather than a purely intellectual response, although her subject matter and approach is changing. Similarly with printmaking, she finds a different discipline leads to a cross pollination of ideas which feeds all strands of her work.
Responding to the landscape and her environment is inevitable. ‘Nature’ in all its aspects inspires her and particularly where things meet, the edge of things. Her landscape/seascape paintings are often heavily layered, reflecting not only what may appear on the surface, but what lies beneath. The images usually develop a narrative of their own.
Walking through and being in the landscape is vital to her practice. Playing with scale, shape and colour is key in developing images from drawings done in situ, from photos, from found objects and from the memories of those experiences.
Sue works on many drawings back in the studio before even attempting a finished piece and then work on several canvases or prints at the same time.
