Susan has been a full-time, independent artist since 2011, she was awarded the Contemporary British Painting prize in 2021. Susan was in-residence from 7th September to the 5th October 2024, our conversation took place on the 3rd October, towards the end of the residency. For more information on Susan visit her website: susanabsolon.co.uk

Stephen Swindells

OK, we're recording now. So Susan has the work made during your residency surprised you in any particular way?

Susan Absolon

Good question. There have been a lot of surprises, in particular how I’ve responded to the space (size) of the studio. That's been the big surprise. It felt important to use its size and configuration purposefully. I had been concerned that it might be overwhelming to work in such an imposing space, but instead, it’s given me an opportunity. So, has the work I’ve made here surprised me? Well, what I’ve made here has expanded my practice. At home, I simply don’t have this type of space, and that impacts the work. Having these huge walls has made it possible to work in sequence, to see my work more clearly, how one thing relates to another.

SS. I was thinking about any kind of new discoveries, possibly within the processes of making your work, whether there have been any new methods come into play?

SA. That's interesting. The surprise that you were asking about in the work usually comes from working in a blind spot, in the sense that I don’t have a plan for what the steps will be within each piece of work. Not knowing what I'm doing, what I'm aiming for, sometimes not even being able to see what I'm doing can be very productive. I might work on a surface, turn it over and what interests me is on the back. This sequence of works on paper began by taking an initial print-impression (like a monoprint) from paint left-over on my palette. I had no clear idea of what the starting point would look like. Some of these print-impressions have remained just as they came off the palette, others I've worked into. I’ve used this way of working before, but during the residency here it has become central.

SS. And so when you say you work blind, do you mean practically but also metaphorically that there's no preconceived idea in terms of where you might end up with a with a piece of work?

SA. No, none at all. I mean, I don't come into the studio without my interests and experiences. But an idea isn’t the starting point for a piece of work. It's all about working with the material, the process, and the surface. I like to work without knowing what I’m working towards.

SS. Does the image begin to emerge then through the process? Or do you feel the image may have come from something that you have previously thought about?

Image 1: Work in progress. *Section of studio wall with 67 of the works on paper from a final sequence of 107, installed from top right to bottom left.*

SA. OK. With this sequence of works on paper (Image 1: Susan walks over to the wall covered with 67 works on paper). Something that troubles me is that I find it very difficult to put a shape in a painting. A shape quickly becomes something that you can name, and then it comes with a narrative, with a weight of history, something you know in current affairs, a personal narrative, or whatever. Working this way (pointing to the works on paper) has enabled me to accept shape without a sense that I’ve put it there with an intention in mind. It’s a more open and comfortable way for me to work with shape that negotiates its own reality, somewhere between depiction and pure process.

I dislike wasting materials, so at the end of each day I’ll scrape up the paint that’s left on my palette and save it in a jam jar where it becomes a kind of slop that I can use as a base material. Or, in the case of this first piece, it was simply a print-impression from left-over paint on the palette and I recognised a potential (image 2).

SA. It started me thinking, let's see what happens if I simply ‘do stuff’ with the process. And that's what led to all of this.

SS. And so from that one print-impression you seem to have gone into a kind of mode of thinking within the process, working with a horizontal and a vertical axis shape … I don't necessarily mean to invoke the religious connotations of it, but this image reminds me of a cross (image 3).

SA. Yes, and that's interesting because it does have associations. It can appear figurative, or have a religious connotation, or it might depict a spinning top or an aeroplane. There’s latitude. It depends on how you personally want to look at something, what you take to it, and what you want to get back, and if you can travel with it.

SS. The first image is probably more horizontal in feel. So where did the vertical axis come from? Is this the next one that followed it afterwards? … (image 3)

Image 3: *‘Squeeze Box’ oil on paper, #6/107*

SA. This is number 6 (image 3). They're in a sequence starting from top right to bottom left on the studio wall. So the first one was, if you like, totally irresponsible in terms of image, it was simply a way of using up the paint on the palette. And then I thought I should do something with that, not be random every time, but intervene in the material and see what happens. It was a simple way to start - ‘let's just go up and down, and side to side’ with a print roller (brayer). There wasn't any associative value for me in the action of the gesture on the palette.

SS. You said the word irresponsible. Do you feel there is a responsibility to the images as the process develops?

SA. Considered intervention in what I make can be unproductive. But I’m conflicted about this. That first one just happened to be there on the palette, it existed already without being fashioned in a particular way.… I think that’s what I mean by irresponsibility.

SS. So it's about trust, about trust in yourself in seeing what might arise if you are prepared to take a risk or follow an intuition?

SA. There's an element of me questioning the place of skill in making work that I just happen upon. You can recognise that something might be OK in itself, and it's a different kind of skill to take material and manipulate it. There's a dance between recognising what’s found and then intentionally manipulating the material.

SS. So responsibility comes in the intention on how to intervene? You know when you listen to Helen Frankenthaler talking about Mountains and Sea (1952), the painting, which really helped her to find her future rhythm, she recognised for a while that something was happening in the work in just pouring and dripping and staining the canvas in deliberate ways but also with an element of chance. As you say it becomes a kind of dance between the found and the intention to intervene.

SA. Yes, that relationship between the found and the imposed… finding the sweet point where you think oh, that one's got something: ‘Where did that come from?’ In truth, the found holds greater interest for me, but I think both aspects are OK actually.

SS. Yes, I think so too. Let me just find the next question … I want to talk about the paintings. You arranged the paintings on the batons in a very considered way, placing them at different levels and with different spaces in between them, it was almost notational and quite a curatorial act. Are you able to describe some of the processes or the thinking when you were doing that?

SA. With the works on paper, I was really taken by placing them in-between the batons in a strip format, but with the paintings it was different. Initially it was an aesthetic judgement, about how the whole wall looked with the different sizes and formats displayed together.

But then when I started to look at it with more consideration, I thought ‘hang on’, what would it look like if I changed that piece around and so on … would the works speak to one another in a different way, if at all? So there were those two things at play, the aesthetic and the relational. I don't usually make paintings in sequence as elements of a composite work.

Image 4: *Susan arranging works on the wall covered with paintings*

SS. They tend to be considered much more as stand-alone individual pieces?

SA. Yes, although over time things come around, back and forth. I can identify works that sit together, but a series might span a period of ten years and there could be years between one painting and the next one that might relate to it directly in one way or another, right? So, it's not important for me to make a painting and then immediately follow on and do another and go through the same process with a few variations. There are always a lot of paintings on the go simultaneously, but they are likely only connected by my painting language rather than a subject or a title, or whatever.

SS. When you say aesthetic decisions in the ordering of them on the batons, do you do you mean by a formal approach, by colour or a shape or texture, or by the size and format of the stretcher?

SA. It’s a pure design thing. If you had a piece of paper and you were putting shapes on it, where do you put the shapes so that it is pleasing to the eye? (image 4)

SS. It appeared to me that the paintings on the wall were accruing a composite aspect over time. I know you’ve already answered this question but do you see the potential in thinking of the whole wall(s) as a composite piece of work in itself?

SA. No, I wasn't thinking that the whole wall could be a piece of work. But this way of displaying paintings is interesting. Something I can struggle with in an exhibition is the rhythm or structure of its curation. Come to think of it, I really enjoy groupings, conversations, asymmetry, providing there is a rationale.

SS. But what you were doing is, say, very different from the Royal Academy summer exhibition, where the tradition is the salon approach, stack them high and quite close together, and so on. Whereas you were, really, as you say, designing upon the wall, and maybe the word design is a term not to be afraid of in this context. Do you think the compositional element to the wall might have some affiliations to what was happening in individual paintings?

SA. I remember when you suggested putting an extra baton higher up on the wall and I was very specific about its height and that it should not be symmetrical with the other batons, and specifically what the length of the baton should be … definitely something interesting started to happen when I placed the paintings on the batons. I haven't really dug down into why the arrangement was that specific, it just felt like the right action to take.

SS. Yes, it just struck me that your initial relationship to the size of the walls and the batons started to become a feature of the residency … earlier on anyway, it set the tone for what was to follow.

SA. Yes definitely.

SS. With the works on paper you were using monoprint type techniques and obviously staining the paper or using an embossing technique on them in various ways. I wondered if you could elaborate on that more if during the sequential process you were working towards a particular motif that also traversed across into the paintings?

Right image 5: ‘Dolly’, oil on board, 28cm x 30cm, 2024

SA. Yes, for example in ‘Dolly’ (image 5) and in other small paintings I used similar gestures of scraping, blotting, printing and a variation of the cross shape. The paintings were made to stand alone, and each one has its own inner logic. In the paper sequence I moved back and forth between depiction and gesture trying to avoid the limitations of each. Maybe the individual paintings are more dexterous in this respect. With the works on paper it was more about the journey and the whole, rather than the individual components.

SS. These pieces (images 6 to 8) are seemingly quiet images, that also have a potential nature inspired feel to them as well.

SA. I get a real buzz when that sense of openness is there. When a suggestion of landscape, or an interior, an anatomical detail, … when all of these possibilities can coexist.

SS. But when you say picture making, do you do you mean that it is bringing forth something like the idea of foreground, middle-ground, background, that might also be descriptive in a mimetic way?

SA. I try to arrive at a point where, let's call it a real space, I don't like the term, but here for example (image 6), is the view from above, in front, or within? The mark making is organic, there is a bodily feel, perhaps a landscape, or a cross-section. So I try to bring all of those things together in one piece of work.

SS. All the images look like they've just happened instantly as opposed to being constructed or worked over, is that important?

SA. Well, I’ve intervened heavily on some of them and others hardly at all. For example, in this one where the only intervention after that initial impression from the palette was to give it this side sweep (image 7).

Image 7: *‘The distance between my body and my head’ oil on paper, #14/107*

Whereas on one like … I don't know let's say, maybe this one (image 8), I thought it was completely lost and overworked and I was really unhappy with it, so there was a lot of reworking after the initial print.

SS. You have worked with a reduced palette or a restricted palette. I presume that is a deliberate thing, is it? (we continuously move between the paintings wall and the works on paper wall)

SA. Particular brands of certain colours are really enjoyable to work with. Physically, I respond to their viscosity, so their handling is pleasurable … colour and texture combined are important. I didn't want to expand the palette too much so that I could focus on something else within the process. As soon as I start to bring in lots of colour, I’m making pictures. For example, I added some pastel shades here, (pointing to one image) but it felt like an embellishment, an unnecessary imposition. Restricting the palette helped me to home in on the process.

SS. Do you think the structure of paintings lend themselves more to what you're terming as picture making? Perhaps due to the physicality of a canvas and stretcher?

SA. I think what has happened during the residency is that I've become far more focused on the materials rather than making pictures. So, with the paintings on board or canvas, that’s me partially falling back into what I normally do. I've started to use collage, though, and I am getting a lot from that. Using the food trays (aluminium-foil food trays), has been so much fun. So that's something that has developed in making paintings here. I brought a few paintings from home and expected to continue with them in my habitual way. But my approach has changed here, and that’s surprised me.

SS. Right, there's one piece actually which you've got propped up on the stool there, since we are talking about the food trays. I said the other day, when I glanced at it quickly, it reminds me of John Stezaker’s surreal photo-collage, as the squashed food tray has taken on the form of face, and there's an indication of some shoulders underneath the face (image 9), was that a conscious decision?

Left image 9: ‘Face Off’, oil on aluminium and calico, 25.5cm x 20.5cm, 2024

SA. Yes, it was. That was one of the little paintings I brought from home to finish here. I’d made a couple of palette prints with a cut up food tray and the tray seemed to offer something interesting. I flattened one with a brayer and fixed it to this painting. It took on a strong presence and it acts to question the function of likeness, representation within the painting. I don't usually make figurative imagery, it's kind of a taboo in my work … I suppose. Not necessarily a healthy one, but using that food tray activated the painting in an unexpected way.

SS. Do you think your pensiveness or your reluctance to move into a more explicit figurative mode is because it might box you in a little bit?

SA. I find it difficult to make figurative paintings. I need a reason for putting a figure in an image, something that does its best to avoid narrative. In this case, the tray is a substitute that taps into my thoughts about the function of depiction in painting.

SS. It seems that whatever figurative thing you pick upon, say, like the back of the head in these pieces, it becomes then the point of departure into another kind of mark making process. In other words, a playful sense of figuration, like in these head pieces, might just be a catalyst to initiate more abstract compositions or further ambiguities?

SA. Yes, you are right. Something I've become interested in with the last sequence of works on paper is this bar shape and its potential to hover between the figurative and something other.

SS. It's a distinctive shape.

SA. It’s already very figurative, but also simply a shape and I like that it functions ambiguously.

SS. So it can oscillate.

SA. Yes, it can do both things, something I find rather energising.

SS. Do you think the way you use particular earth colours and the haptic qualities you create in your use of materials has a specific reference to the traditions of painting? I suppose in the sense that it is clearly made by the sign of the hand, in brush marks, pouring techniques and stains etc.

SA. I relate it to manuscript, the rhythm and shape of words, a kind of personal signature that amounts to language. The traditions of painting are still a radical proposition, I think. Especially so because there are many more expedient ways of making something now.

SS. Some painters have adopted the the look of the digital by imitating the the pixelation of electronic images on a screen. Do you ever feel the need to adopt digital processes as part of the painting process?

SA. No. My relationship to the raw ingredients of painting is what drives me. Paint, surface, tools (brushes, scrapers, and so on), my hand, and my inner monologue, how to orchestrate these things engages me completely. By choice, I would live an analogue life in every way if it were still possible.

SS. I think we're probably getting close to the end. There's there's just one final question, is there anything else to say on any developments from the residency that will enable you in some way once you are back in your UK studio?

SA. Yes, from a mindset perspective. It’s been emotional here, to make the work in a place where I can stretch myself. Also, the residency has reinforced the importance of staying independent. So I need to find ways to exhibit and develop this work when I’m back in the UK. Oh yes, and I must sort out my studio!

SS. Thank you, I think that is a good place to end, I’ll turn the recorder off. It’s been a pleasure, brilliant!

SA. Thank you. It’s been an amazing opportunity!

A conversation with Susan Absolon

A Residency in the Morvan