Susan Wilson

Edward

Etching

2023

Rahera Windsor QSM

Etching 2022

Ihimaera at Oslo attending the NZSA Conference in the Maritime Museum.

etching and drypoint on Fabriano paper 2015

I was commissioned to paint Witi during the conference. We also recorded an interview on the subject of portraying Katherine Mansfield. Witi wrote a short story called “Dear Miss Mansfield” and I painted 11 paintings for a Folio Society book (pub 2000) of her Short Stories . The interview hasn’t been published but I deeply enjoyed the long conversation we had about KM. One of this series is in the British Museum Dept Prints & Drawings.

Each night i would come in out of the cold and dark and draw from memory.

The winter sunsets can be astonishingly good, and in a tiny book devised by the fashion label Preen, for a show i had been invited to, i got working with coloured pencil, drawing throughout the winter months.

Cassino Station ink sketchbook drawing 2014

As I left the station on the Rome train I made this drawing. I went to Cassino for the 70th anniversary of the capture of the monastery and town by the Allies. My father was a stretcher bearer throughout the battles for Cassino, and my uncle was a gunner. The New Zealanders endured conditions which the German General Fido Von Senger und Etterlin said reminded him of the Somme. The Maori Battalion heroically took the Station and held it against impossible odds. The services at the Station were profound and very sorrowful.

sketchbook drawing, gel pen, coloured pencil, pencil

Ink, pen, coloured pencil

Flores became seriously ill when only 5 years old. I kept on drawing her, perhaps wanting, by doing so, to keep her alive. Certainly, to keep the memory of her alive. Alas this did not, of course work.

sketchbook drawing from last year’s Ring Cycle at ROH.

red ink, pencil and coloured pencil 2018

small sketchbook drawing of a Goya Tapestry painting in the Prado Madrid.

Made on a visit to the Prado in 2015.

gel pen, 2000 on a winters day at the beach.

Etching and aquatint on Fabriano paper

I draw this often and made an etching from it, curiously omitting the grieving dog. Drawing from works that draw you in and compel you to look further creates a deep engagement and opening up of the image. Its an exploration of colour, of design, of subject and composition.

pencil in sketchbook 2001

Made from a boat just off the coast, looking towards the Rakautara River.

blue ink, pencil in sketchbook 2016

Lake Rotoiti was where I went once on a holiday as a child. It was for my parents a working holiday and they took us with them. They were running a Bible Class Camp. It was very funny and very silly, as the boys who went were clowns and played up big time. My parents liked the fun and absurdity and we seemed to never have laughed so much. I really couldn’t believe how beautiful the lake was - and is. I went back with my brother for a picnic and made this drawing on the lake shore. ( I did wish all the clowning boys were still there.) My sister-in-law, a book binder, made two sketchbooks from long thin offcuts of good paper so for a short time I had wonderful handmade long format pages to deal with.

Ink in sketchbook

The Body Clothed is my weekly class at The Royal Drawing School which I devise. Every day I do, a model wears something different. It’s very much about fashion history, textile design, theatrical clothes, dressing up. Ive always lived by Portobello Road, with its extreme style and history of producing leading fashion designers, Preen, and Oswald Boateng are good examples.

Here the model has dozed off.

ink, pencil sketchbook drawing

I’m forever grateful to the models I work with at The Drawing School. Moss is one of the team who collaborates with me. I like the way Paula Rego sees her models as partners in what she creates. Thats how it is for me and my students. The model brings the concept alive. You can’t get a good image without them being on board. I am building small installations each week, they are fun, they can be tragic, I base them often on opera productions I’ve seen, ballet, film, or someone I glimpse on the streets in London.

colour pencil, pencil, on ingres paper A4 size.

I did an Intervention at Coll Y Cortes in their Albemarle St Gallery in 2013. Each day I drew works on show in their gallery and had an exhibition with them after these summer months of drawing. Pedro de Mena (Spain 1628-1688) created polychrome wood sculptures of startling beauty. Picasso was very affected by them and at one point curators at The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid put a weeping Madonna by Pedro de Mena next to Guernica.

sketchbook drawing in gel pen, made in the Goya Portrait Exhibition at The National Gallery.

Le Marche Italy /ink drawing in sketchbook.

The small National Park near Ancona is a place I return to to draw. It is wild, with steeply wooded hills which surround a remote bay where a Napoleonic Fort stands, built to keep the English from capturing the harbour at Ancona. I’ve made many small drawings of the sea here and the rocky shore.

ink in sketchbook

colour pencil sketchbook 2018

Made in the National Gallery

ink drawing from Louvre Rembrandt 2011

ink in sketchbook

gel pen sketchbook drawing

Nigel Glendinning the great Goya Scholar was Hon President of ARTES, a group dedicated to promoting Spanish and Latin American Art and Culture in the UK.

I worked with Nigel setting up an AGM in Cambridge, and also asked him to come to Apsley House to talk to us about the huge damaged Equestrian Goya of the Iron Duke which was kept rolled up under the bed at Stratfield Saye, for the Duke did not like the picture. This talk was marvellous, funny, deep in detail and rich in context.

ink in sketchbook 2014

A slow ride through spring foliage to Rome after the Cassino Commmemorations.

gel pen in sketchbook

I wanted to go to Udine, Italy. The New Zealanders at the close of the war held Udine. Knowing there are very good frescoes in the city I wanted to follow Dad’s footsteps and see all I could of the Tiepolos. You can see them easily, few tourists visit. The guard, chatting to me in Italian became emotional when I said I was a NZer. His village was liberated by them, they were overjoyed and the kiwi soldiers gave the children sweets.

ink/pencil/sepia gel pen in sketchbook

sketchbook drawing , pencil and coloured pencil. 2015

indian ink in sketchbook

Each Monday finds me on the tube with a bag of improbable clothes and props and quite possibly my dog, going to teach my class at The Royal Drawing School. I’ve taken, amongst other things, half a tree, dogs, carnival costume from Nottinghill Carnival, Polynesian headdress, and Cook Island Te Vai Vai’s to hang on the walls. Here Tom is dressed as a figure from Tiepolo, lately a big influence on me, after many journeys to see the Bishops Residenz in Wurtzburg which was frescoed by Giandomenico, Lorenzo and Gianbattista over a two year period. It is divine. (My spotty pointer lies with him.)

ink coloured pencil 2019

I worry about rising sea levels and the implications for the Pacific Islanders. Tom is wearing a headdress made by women at a workshop at The Maritime Museum. They came to London on their way back from visiting Cook Island soldiers’ graves in the WW1 battlefields in Northern France.

A ballpoint drawing made at the opera, looking up to the Upper Slips, Royal Opera House. As a student I spent many happy hours perched in the Upper Slips. The people up there would chat and befriend you, alone you felt as rich as a king. It’s the world of Les Enfants du Paradis. - and of Sickert too, who often drew the people in the gods in the Music Halls.

Wellington Harbour from Roseneath 2017

A ballpoint pen sketch of the same view I return to paint. An ongoing series.

Ink, gel pen sketchbook drawing with extended pages on all sides.

I made this in the exhibition “The Sacred Made Real” curated by Dr Xavier Bray. I’ve loved this huge Zurbaran for a long time and the loan of it from Seville to London created an opportunity to make a long drawing over several days.