Utopian 5 Painting

Susan Laughton graduated with a BA Hons Art & Design (First) in 2002 after working in architecture for twelve years. Her work is exhibited regularly in the UK and is held in private and corporate collections in the UK, Europe, the US, Singapore and Australia. It has been selected for the Royal West Academy Drawn exhibition, the Royal Scottish Academy Annual exhibition and Fully Awake 5:6 at the Freelands Foundation, London.. She has been professional artist since 2006 and currently works from Vale Artists Studios in Cheshire. "The landscape is my starting point, not as a picturesque view, but as a space travelled through and experienced often on the edges of the urban and the rural. It is a source of man made and natural structures, surfaces and colours from which I construct my own pared down responses. Man made structures in particular impose their presence against the sky: telegraph poles, fences, power lines or an isolated building...structures that create tension within space and mark the passage of time. My approach is reductive: removing superfluous elements, concentrating on the physicality of edges and boundaries often in contrast to the veiled, shifting white light of the north. I make drawings of remembered details seen from the corner of my eye, fleeting juxtapositions elusive to photography or more studied compositions. My paintings contrast intentional marks with random scratches, washes of paint with fine layers of plaster, gesso or card. Focussing on process and materials is important to me as a way of allowing the painting to emerge as an object in its own right. Structured and methodical approaches combined with spontaneous and intuitive reactions allow me to plan and take risks: to combine control with "˜let's see what happens if...' " Lichfield Art Prize: Finalist, 2016 John Moores Painting Prize Walker Gallery Liverpool: longlisted, 2012 selected: Axis for Artists