Comforting Things A Happy Still Life

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Born in Scotland and based in Curl Curl, a suburb situated in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Susannah Paterson creates curious and fantastical art. By executing her works in a predominately surreal style, she is afforded the opportunity to explore the vivid, imaginative mind she has cultivated since childhood. Her previous thirty-year career in psychotherapy and hypnotherapy allows her to explore what dwells within her subconscious mind and further adds to the unreal quality of her unconventional works.

With an alternating creative approach, Susannah’s works are characteristically derived via one of two ways. Some works arrive as a consequence of deliberate intention, and the overwhelming urge to convey specific settings and emotional constructs. These works are often inspired by the type of open-air spaces that comprise northern Sydney, and frequently include imagery of the sea and the sky. Much of the emotional commentary is associated with the setting and the sensations of expansion and wonder. Other works are delivered after an intense duration of intuitive creation, and commence with a single colour or palette and hundreds of instinctive marks on the canvas. This process usually conjures unforeseen images and unconscious dialogue.

In addition to her surreal works, Susannah is a practicing potter and much of her pottery borrows from the quirky shapes and scenes she integrates into her paintings. Initially learning the artform whilst studying Fine Art and Ceramics in 2007, her skills were further developed at the Open Studio Program at Brookvale TAFE, between 2016 – 2022, where she worked under the tutelage of master potter Christopher James, and has recently completed and graduated with a Diploma in Ceramics from that same institution. In-between her formal training, Susannah was mentored for several years by the late Kerrie Lester, a sixteen-time Archibald Prize finalist and Packing Room Prize winner.