Susan Gough
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My work explores ideas to do with time, memory, loss and the human condition. Since my degree, where I used landscape as a metaphor for the human psyche, I find I still refer to TJ Clark’s essay, Jackson Pollock’s Abstraction, Reconstructing Modernism*, where he talks of “the mud and the sheen”, expressing how we are rooted in the mud and filth, yet always aspire to the stars. I tend to work in series, which is another way of expressing time’s passage.
Seasonal changes in the landscape through colour and texture and tally marks are a way of expressing passing time; time taken to live a life and time taken to make a work. Life is nothing without repetition; it provides the framework from which we can explore creativity.
Expressive use of mark making and the evidence of the artists’ hand are important to me. I have recently been doing quite a lot of crochet and knitting and found that textile construction has crept into some of the pieces; the idea of a length of yarn, a line, by being knotted or looped can produce a textile surface is another aspect that I sometimes bring into my practice. Everything is dealing with time and surface.
The push and pull of making paintings, the dual struggle of instinctive mark making and intellectual appraisal is a continual process and keeps the tension alive within the work.
More recently, I have begun to explore painting as a three dimensional object; I am interested in how a painting might occupying a space and interact with other artworks nearby. To this end I am in the process of applying to Teeside University for a place on the AA2A scheme; the use of their workshops will enable me to be more ambitious with this study.
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