Published 20/05/2020
As a response to the current Covid 19 pandemic, British artist Susie Hamilton (b.1950) has created a new series of paintings acknowledging the important work of the brave front line staff who are constantly supporting relief efforts and aiding those in need. The COVID Wards series fits into her own practice and forms an extension of her primary inspiration and themes of loneliness and isolation.
''I paint figures in a wilderness. This may be natural wilderness, a tropical forest or an ice-field, or it may be a bleak public space such as superstore, casino, hospital, banqueting hall or shopping mall. Such settings challenge the figure and are characterised by glaring light which exposes and blitzes it. Set in difficult and exacting places, the figures are also made more vulnerable by my ̃iconoclastic” method of painting which seeks to deface or undo them. I use the mutable and unpredictable nature of paint to create people who are similarly in flux. They are assaulted by marks and blots, dissolve into acrylic fluidity or turn into nameless shapes so that both figure and figurative representation are destabilised and transformed. Metamorphosis, central to all my work, includes metamorphosis into abstraction through which an identifiable image is turned into something unnamed and mysterious.''
This new series, continues these ideas, concerns and techniques. It has been included in Anna McNay’s recent article in Studio International and has been written about by Louisa Buck in her blog in The Art Newspaper.
Susie Hamiton studied painting at St Martins School of Art (1968-1972) and Byam Shaw school of Art (1989-1992). She is represented by Paul Stolper, London with whom she has shown since 1996 in nine solo exhibitions and in group shows and international art fairs.
Her work is in many public and private collections including Bernard Jacobson Collection, Church of St Giles Cripplegate, The Groucho Club, The House of St Barnabas, Deutsche Bank,The Economist, The Methodist Collection of Modern Art, Murderme Collection and New Hall Art Collection. In 2014, she was selected to be Artist in Residence at the Cornelius Foundation, Lagamas, France. She currently lives and works in London.
Discover all of Susie Hamilton's work on Bridgeman Images.
