Susan Brinkhurst is a multi-disciplinary artist often working with natural materials found in the landscape. Whether working in film or drawing, she is interested in materiality, scale and the physical process. Her large-scale charcoal drawings balance between figuration and abstraction. She employs a combination of atmospheric charcoal surfaces which she subjects to an onslaught of physical and in some cases aggressive marks made with rocks and stones she finds in the local environment. “The energy of the subject is transposed to paper as I explore my relationship with the landscape. “
Focusing around the River Alde
Susan Brinkhurst is working on a long-term ongoing multidisciplinary project focussed on the landscapes and waterways around the River Alde, Suffolk, where she is based. Walking the same terrain daily she is aware of it’s vulnerability
“I see how the river walls collapse, how flooded meadows have been transformed to tidal mudflats. I see how trees die from saline water and new salt water pools appear. And yet within this environmental destruction the shifts can bring a new beauty as nature adapts. “
Line
The reeds are sunk into the floor, cutting diagonally across the gallery space. They mimic the reeds running alongside the river bank, exaggerating the horizontality of the landscape. River mud marks the tidelines.
Mud
Mud dug, with kind permission from the Crown Estate, from the River Alde is brought into the gallery space. It is the essence of the river. It’s rich blackness, smell and materiality confronts the viewer with a contradiction of repulsion and physical immersion.
Immersion
My works on paper are equally physical in their construction. The large-scale charcoal drawings balance between figuration and abstraction, employing a combination of atmospheric charcoal surfaces which I subject to an onslaught of physical and in some cases aggressive marks made with rocks and stones found in the local environment. The energy of the subject is transposed to paper as I explore my relationship with the landscape.
Susan Brinkhurst studied in London and Nottingham. She has been a visiting lecturer at Norwich University of the Arts and University of Suffolk and part time teaching 2000 – 2014. She has held a varied career, instigated projects led numerous workshops within schools and community groups. She is Community Arts Coordinator for First Light Festival, Lowestoft.
