Susan Vesely MA rca Interview

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Copyright of images belongs to the Artist. Copyright of interview belongs to Ovenden Contemporary (Art Promotions) Limited. Any un-authorised use is strictly prohibited. All rights are reserved.
(c) 2006 Ovenden Contemporary (Art Promotions) Limited

OC: Hi Sue. You rely heavily upon the human figure in your work and have said 'the body is a monument'. A monument to what?

SV: To itself. To our humanity. It's the evidence of who we are. The mind is invisible. To celebrate a good mind and it's effects and actions, we make a statue of the body of the person with that mind. And it goes further, that statue becomes public property. So we all own the image, the monument is ours and a path to that mind is forged through the representation of the body.

OC: Is the body the only evidence of our existence?

SV: No, our culture is the general result of our existence, and making art and monuments is a part of that general evidence.

OC: Are you trying to leave evidence of your own existence?

SV: Most definitely. I have always thought that I was an artist, from my earliest thoughts. I think this started because I could always draw and people remarked on it when I was 2 or 3. It's natural to me to make art, it's my idea of who I am and when I don't work I get a sense of failure. So I feel that what I do is a life's work, there's no choice. But recently I've sort of grown up a bit out of the "do it because you are driven" mentality, and I've been thinking about what I really mean by the act of communication.

OC: Did something occur to cause this shift in thinking?

SV: Well, when you've been working for a long time your original motivation develops into something different, into something relevant to who you are now. As a young artist, I was amazed by the visual world, the appearance of anything and every thing was a reward and source of inspiration. I could make a picture out of anything, because the subject matter did not change the thing that I was doing, which was seeing in a certain way, and putting down a visual equivalent to my thoughts about the source material.

OC: What changed?

SV: The enquiry you make when you look at something and try to make an equivalent of the essence of what you see, is a journey that never ends. I started to put figures into my pictures because I found that this added a dimension to the power of the appearance of things. Objects not only had their own mystifying essences, but you could put a person in there to show how it felt to be in that room close to those things. And not even get into trouble for it. I naturally used my own body to feel the pose I was painting.

OC: Do you use models?

SV: No. I have never used models in my paintings. All the female figures were me.

OC: So how did this style develop?

SV: The work developed so that the figure became the starting point, the organisation of space around the figure became the essential natural world. As I got older, I was less and less interested in myself and my physical being, more interested in humanity generally. I needed to be consciously in control of my decisions, my brain had taken over.

OC: The introduction of the human figure in your work must have been an important step for you.

SV: It had changed the focus of the work without changing the outward look of the subject matter. I still felt entirely compelled to use the figure as a communication channel. Whilst continuing to draw on the inner source of how my own body felt for information about the pose, I had to examine why I was painting figures in every work. Once I had worked that out, I would have defined what I thought I was communicating and it would give me a reasoned way to paint the figures in a meaningful context.

OC: It's interesting that you have altered the motivation behind the act of communication, without, ostensibly at least, changing the aesthetic result of the act of that communication. Many Artists, in the course of creative development, would find a way to achieve alternative results without changing the motivation, the conceptual process they go through to achieve that result. It's an important distinction to make. Artistic growth need not necessarily affect the actual art 'product'. It can, instead, inform the reasoning behind and the understanding of the end result. You mention that your art has become less about you and more about humanity in general. Is that change a result of your shifting focus for what you paint, or vice versa?