Susan Lincoln

'Sunny Days and Still Nights'

Exhibition opens on:

Thursday 24th April 2008

until Tuesday 17th June

Feeding the Birds

Susan Lincoln - SOLD

I feel I have the perfect career.  When I am painting everything seems right.  The outside world falls away and I am immersed in my own subject and experience.

For more than twenty years now I have felt compelled to create art.  In 2006 I rather nervously attempted my first painting on canvas and was lucky to be offered my first exhibition at High Head Gallery.

It proved to be a wonderful opportunity which sparked a chain of life changing events.

I was offered further exhibitions across Cumbria, Newcastle and Edinburgh.

I am delighted to be returning to High Head Gallery on the 24th April for a third exhibition entitled Sunny Days and Still Nights.

I choose to live and work mostly in isolation, it keeps my mind free.  I paint from imagination, for me it is the touchstone to explore an inner world of feelings and dreams.  I like my work to have a happy or magical element to it.  Art should make you smile as well as think.  Copying the art of other artists has a certain value as it is useful to learn techniques, but my reason to do are is to express myself not to ape anyone.

When starting each new painting I visualise in my mind the key elements of the work.  I paint directly onto the canvas without drawing first, so that any work is spontaneous.  Then I commit lots of paint quickly to the surface, starting with the sky to set the mood.  I use acrylics because they allow me to work dry on  dry wihtin minutes.  Perhaps the most crucial decision in any painting is knowing when to stop.  Everything must be balanced.  Sometimes this decision is easy to make, but on occasions it is far more difficult to resolve an idea successfully.  The ideal point at which to leave a painting, I think, is when it is no longer worrying you, when you look at it and are quite satisfied with everything.

Every painting is a challenge and this is something I enjoy.  Essentially I strive to resolve each painting for my own satisfaction, but of course, I hope that the end result will also give pleasure to others.