A materials led approach

Susan Brinkhurst trained using a combination of fine art thinking together with a materials led approach to making. Constructing, manipulating, there is a physicality in the response to the subject matter: Whether looking closely and re-presenting the everyday or exploring personal and subjective journeys. The material and content are reinforced by the use of historical or feminist references to the media being used. Citations often underpin these visual narratives.

The work may allude to Boltanski’s explorations of ‘all the same but different’, Racheal Whiteread’s experiments with negative spaces and different planes and Hesse’s playful use of materials.

Her recent drawings sit between figuration and abstraction, employing a combination of atmospheric charcoal surfaces which she subjects to an onslaught of more physical, in some cases aggressive, marks made with rocks and stones found in the vicinity of her subject. The energy of the subject is transposed to paper exploring as she does this, her relationship with the landscape. At a distance these works are satisfying within the tradition of artists from Gainsborough and Constable to Creffield and Middleditch. The closer they are scrutinised the more they reveal about human psychology.