CRITICAL EXPRESSIONS
These abstract paintings use the critical gesture, the thought line, slow expression to create self-reflexive layering. They also use spontaneity, experimentation and the free gesture. When paint is an expressive device rather than purely self-expression, not only concerning the personality but commenting on painting itself it becomes objective, post-conceptual and maintains multiple purposes rather than one singular direction. Each painting is consciously different from the previous in a developmental trajectory of form, line, space, colour but in addition to the formal qualities there is a dialogue with emotional range and the philosophical construction of a painting. There is an organised decoding, appraising, critique of experience of previous art and the artist’s own practice. The artworks appear in idea pages, then pastels, then paint, then photos, then further in paint. Each painting is an embodiment of criticality.
At the personal level Suzanne has found the concept of interiority important. This concerns memory, doubt, connectivity, body, dreaming and idea-making – all functions of thought with action, which becomes energised in the act of painting and translates into emotional response and reflective perception.
This series was preceded by a figurative series in the style hopping trajectory the artist takes. If identity after postmodernism is seen as fluid, unfixed and mobile this artist chooses to traverse different knowledge systems of art history, philosophy, contemporary literature and architecture to make sense in her own work of the richness of painting languages. It’s a maverick approach with regular changes in style and formats every two or three years exploring paradoxical artistic routes and creating playful and irreverent connections.
