ARTISTS TALKING
Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Subscriber resource
Susie Hamilton
For the last five years I have painted cowboys, explorers and criminals – men seeking liberation outside the laws and limits of society in dangerous, exhilarating places.
In these alternative spaces the figures often appear fragmented or insubstantial – hit by light, melted into air or bombarded by snow. By transforming them in this way I want to suggest an ambivalence about their experience that could be one of painful obliteration or one of physical or spiritual ecstasy. Increasingly I have also tried to suggest such extremes of pain or pleasure by using thin, watery mixtures of acrylic paint which are allowed to flood across images in translucent veils, bursting boundaries and uniting shapes to suggest overwhelming emotions or sensations. My current show at Ferens Art Gallery in Hull is based on work by the seventeenth century metaphysical poet and Hull MP, Andrew Marvell. Avoiding human relationships, the speaker of these poems wants to be "embraced" by branches, "embroidered" by leaves and fused with the non-human. He wishes to lose himself in a state of bliss and innocence among woods and gardens, a state he refers to as "paradise alone". Rather than simply becoming immersed in this green idyll, however, he remains burdened by a sense of conflict, destructiveness, mutability and mortality. My paintings once again focus on the image of...
. . . to read the rest of this resource
and access all Knowledge Bank and Publication articles subscribe online - from only £6.
If you are a subscriber please login here.