Susan Calverley Parker - MA Painting
Painting
Susan Calverley Parker is a practicing artist whose current work uses oil paint, graphite or charcoal. Evolving from many years of painting landscapes in mixed media, her paintings have become more varied in subject and less representational. Susan considers nature and science as her inspiration, while referring to the oscillations of contemporary art, the strangeness of surrealism, the majesty of the romantic era, abstraction and expressionism, amongst other genres. While painting Susan uses the materiality of the medium to explore emotions and juxtapositions of colour and structure. Looking at the boundaries and the connections between the paint marks, the surface becomes an abstract image loosely related to the subject. Reading and writing about art and artists are an important part of the process, often leading to a slowing down for reflection on the image. A single painting can have many layers and subtle changes over weeks or months to achieve the final complexity that makes the painting speak on several levels. Susan practices life drawing on a regular basis and finds that the human form is part of the language of her work, using folds, creases, shadows, the infinite complexity of anatomy which add depth to a painting (whatever the subject). Drawing from memory and imagination is another part of the process that becomes entangled within the works. Contemporary scientific discoveries add to the thought process and emotions within a piece of work, so the complex subject of relationships and the Anthropocene in the natural world has become an important element. Painting on a flat surface creates a world of its own which can be entered and explored in many ways. Susan continues to create paintings which she finds aesthetically satisfying but also challenging to her academic understanding of art and the human condition.
