Susie Hamilton

Susie Hamilton’s dynamic practice is concerned with a wide range of subjects but often focuses on solitary people in impersonal public spaces or natural wildernesses. From the heroic, isolated exploits of astronauts and Arctic explorers to lone shoppers in supermarkets, all subjects are equal under her gaze. Other works turn attention towards crowds on beaches and in hotel dining rooms, who, as in Hamilton’s paintings of single figures, are invaded by blooms and veils of paint. Comprising over 300 paintings in oil and acrylic and numerous works on paper, Hamilton’s work is here divided into thematic sections that bring insight to her research. As critic and broadcaster Charlotte Mullins observes, ‘Hamilton often uses literature as a springboard for her work. Her paintings draw out the ambiguities of Shakespeare, the fragmentary chaos of TS Eliot, the melancholy of Andrew Marvell.’ From the power of her transmutative, barely human figures presented at the Ferens Art Gallery (2002), to the more recent progression of Hamilton’s solitary forms which move across desert, tundra and forests under attack from natural and unknown forces, her often otherworldly figures remain resilient. As Mullins reflects in her introduction, however, Hamilton’s work is not all ‘pain and suffering.’ Nor is it solely concerned with the human figure. Mullins writes, ‘There is joy too, particularly when she turns her probing eye to the natural world. She captures the quizzical gaze and lightning speed of monkeys, white paint splattering the surface as they race through salt flats. We see the lethal precision of a shark in the depths, the pale camouflage of an owl in a snowstorm, the perfect balance of an ape as it leaps from vine to vine.’ The development of Hamilton’s work further unfolds in an enlightening interview with writer and broadcaster Louisa Buck, from the night-time desolation of motorways and petrol stations to an evolving interest in human and animal figures. Buck’s in-conversation also details Hamilton’s series ‘Plumpers’ and ‘Mutilates’, uneasy figures who border categories of abstraction and representation. Writer, editor and international curator Anna McNay, in her eight-part extended essay commissioned for the publication, discusses Hamilton’s literary influences in detail, drawing out the ways that Hamilton’s own biography shapes the work and informs her perspectives on landscapes, people and animals. Designed...