'I was probably in a manic episode at the time, but I suddenly decided that I was going to use oil paints'. A testament to her natural talent, Sue is a self-taught oil painter who is also bi-polar. A long term sufferer of the condition, Sue has found that oil painting has been a great outlet for her emotions - something which, as we shall see, has gone on to shape the stories of strength and determination that she portrays in her work today.
Encouraged creatively by her father who was a welder, 'I could solder before I could paint' she funnily tells me, Sue began to sketch and then paint from a young age. 'I would also always get told off for doodling in school', Sue says. 'Well they do say that is sometimes the mark of a genius' I say and we laugh.
'But', I can now suddenly feel my own face being analysed by Sue's perceptive eyes, 'I was just fascinated by drawing people. My French teacher threw a rubber at me for doodling, but I was actually trying to draw him... it was just his character, it wasn't so much his look but his stance and I just had to get that on the paper.' Once she left school, Sue decided to shelve her art work entirely and join the police. Resultantly, it would be another nine years before she would pick up a brush again.
And then she discovered oil paint.
'When you squeeze that tube, there's nothing quite like it' she tells me, 'it's just that colour, the smell, the shine'.
What makes Sue's work rather unique is that, unlike many portrait artists, she enjoys capturing not so much the face with her radiant oil paint, often leaving it out entirely, but the body. 'People's hands and feet' in particular, she tells me, 'can tell you a great deal about someone'. It reminds me, as it also might for our more dedicated subscribers, of the talented portrait artist Ian MacKenzie, who featured in Issue 3- another former police officer who would focus upon people's hands as a way of portraying their character.
Though, while Sue may accurately depict such features in her portraits, her aim in doing so is not so much to present viewers with a raw depiction of the female form, but instead to bring to life the stories of those women within them. 'Why however', I ask, 'is that you only like to paint women in particular?'
Sue has, at intervals, had quite a traumatic time not only with her mental health but also with past relationships. She nevertheless understands that these are difficulties that many women go through. One story of abuse in particular is, Sue highlights, how women are prone to suffer from attacks with regards to their appearance - often from and subsequently made worse by those closet to them - and come to feel incredibly body conscious as a result. Sue however, intends to depict a show of strength in her works by presenting women who have 'come out the other side and have embraced who they are'.
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