Visiting Susanna's beautiful exhibition today reminded me how art and what it means to me has changed over the years. I recently read a novel by Margaret Foster, 'Keeping the World Away' based on the artist Gwen John and a small painting she did of an interior, the attic room in Paris where she lived and worked. Looking at Susanna's paintings brought to mind this painting and its view, John's view, of a wicker chair, parasol and some primulas and its gentle yet charged light and space. Susanna's interiors seem to capture those moments, in those corners of life where the ordinary, every day, the domestic scenes and objects of so much of female existence take on a fleeting beauty and meaning suggestive of a life lived, felt and exquisitely documented. Taps and hand soap are proudly painted in the foreground of one painting with an inviting sitting room leading off. Here is where I have
been, here is where I felt, here is where I worked and life has happened. However much we have progessed, however much we have equality, I can't recall any paintings (though I may well be wrong) of men painting taps.
*I stand corrected by the way, having seen a painting with the title 'The Scullery ' by Frank Taylor Lockwood including some taps
Likewise, the sofly lit child's bedroom complete with the minutiae of childhood speak of the intimacy and nostalgia of motherhood, the moments you would like to freeze in time or alternatively, return in time to your own childhood.
There is a Ladybird book quality of muted recollection about some of Susanna's paintings, beautiful moments and places recorded, underscored with a slight sadness; we know these moments, whilst beautiful are, in fact, gone, like the fleeting nature of motherhood, every stage that passes a cause for both grief and celebration. Susanna's paintings of
rooftops, houses and lives lived in the exterior world also hint at a nostalgia for another time, being reminiscent of many painters of the 1940s.
Over the years my taste in and appreciation of art has changed
considerably. I remember at York
University on my Art History course being rather scornful of the sculpture of Barbara Hepworth comparing it unfavourably with Jean Arp's more disquieting forms. At nearly 50 however and a mother myself I have the self possession and I hope self acceptance to appreciate and want to engage with art that isn't shocking but subtle, that speaks of ordinary things which are in themselves extraordinary.
When you are in your late teens, early twenties you seek euphoria, the highs and lows of existence. I have found, particularly after developing a chronic
illness and with the turbulence that is motherhood that what I actually want when I stand in front of a piece of art is equilibrium as in life. That is to say, not blandness, not dullness or predictability. I need my soul to be nourished despite and because of the mundane domestic rituals
of motherhood. But I am now
unashamedly seeking and appreciating the quietude and comfort of Susanna's type of painting, one that acknowledges the complexities of adult life but sooths the overloaded mind with memories of how
beautiful moments of this same existence
can be.
I purchased a book whilst on holiday on Scotland earlier in the summer based on the social media phenomenon, 'Ravenous Butterflies' which matches paintings with quotes and one from Virginia Woolf keeps returning to me: 'No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anyone but
oneself'. Susanna's paintings suggest a
world where this a sentiment is vindicated. Sally Allen Author and illustrator
