Hello!
I’m Susannah
I draw, write and make, inspired by meaty old folk narratives - ancient threadbare stories about fear, mystery, challenge and 100 year long curses. I am especially drawn to the lonesome beasts and wicked old hags at the edges of these tales.
The anti-heroines and animalia of the peripheries of folk and fairy tales scratch at something internal and forgotten. My creative practice is an attempt at remembering this ‘forgotten’ thing and reconnecting to an unselfconscious mode of being.
I circle between drawing, writing and making: sifting, seeking and exploring archetypes, themes of loneliness, imagined worlds, misinterpretation and fanciful, falsified recollection. My multi-headed and somewhat chaotic methodology seems to generate the right conditions for me to coax the imaginary into the material realm. From my earliest discoveries in constructed textiles (multiple, wonky attempts to make my own menageries as a small child) sewing felt somehow as pre-programmed and instinctual a place to dwell as drawing for me. When I chose to study fine art & sculpture at university it was because of my insatiable drive for hand-making in paper, cardboard, clay and fabric. I felt a relaxed freedom and a sense of authorship that I struggled to locate elsewhere, when working with these familiar, humble materials.
When I returned to university to study for an MA in Illustration, it was to get to grips with storytelling through drawing, with a particular interest in creatively exploring the mechanics of telling personal stories through sequential imagery.
On Paper:
BA HONs Fine Art Sculpture: Textile pieces, constructed wood and cardboard, plaster.
PGCE Teaching Art & Design in Secondary Schools
MA Illustration Camberwell.
20 years experience teaching in Schools, Colleges and leading private classes and self initiated workshops.
10 years selling my illustrated wares at markets, fairs and online.