Artist Sue Arrowsmith is a perfect fit for the National Botanic Garden of Wales – as well as a rather exciting coup for the venue’s Courtyard Gallery.
In her latest exhibition – on show at the Garden from June 4 – Sue uses natural forms as motifs through which to explore painting and drawing.
She projects her photographs of the natural world and then working with only black, meticulously records the image, placing marks together, in pencil and watercolour.
At first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking “minimalist” and/or “monochrome” but the innumerable and impossibly delicately drawn and painted lines have a startling depth of character and mood; the mind-boggling variations of shade forming an extraordinary palette.
Says Sue: “My earlier works were composed of dense masses of parallel lines, drawn across a flat surface with a ruler. They were purely abstract. After some years, I realised I wanted to work from reality. Now, all my source images are photographed from the natural world and then projected. Trees, plants and scrubland provide endless subject matter, although I still employ similar principles in my work as when they were abstract.”
She says she’s not interested in making ‘pretty pictures’: “Marks are placed together, single gestures creating textures and rhythms. Large paintings of willows are made with single brushstrokes, brushes chosen for the size of the job. Watercolours are made horizontally, the paper flooded with wet black allowing the paint to seep and flow while retaining a level of control. My drawings are traced in a single motion, out of focus areas treated exactly the same as areas of clarity.
“While I am beguiled by nature and all its beauty, it merely serves as the perfect motif so I can explore painting and drawing.”
Manchester-born Sue has exhibited widely in the UK and Europe since graduating from Goldsmiths College, London in 1990 with a BA Hons Textiles degree. She was a prize-winner in both the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 20 in 1997 and the NatWest Art Prize, London in 1998, and in 2010 was Artist in Residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Connecticut, USA. She lives and works in London.
Her National Botanic Garden show – entitled Blowing in the Wind – runs until July 31.
