SUKI WAPSHOTT
This new collection of paintings by Suki represents the most recent progression of her work - known for its deep, emotive colour - work that is highly collected by those with a love of Polzeath and the dramatic North Coast.
“As a small child, Suki’s passion for colour was evident in the embroidery silks she would request at Christmas, and the array of multicoloured, velvety brow bands used to adorn her pony’s bridle. “I still love colour: pure paint from the tube, worked into the canvas, is a glorious thing,” she says. Sometimes the thrill of it stops me working for a moment”.
To create depth, or what she calls “a sort of illusory third dimension to a work” Suki works the surface of her paintings with a brush, cloth or palette knife in order to let back layers of colour filter through to the final layer of paint, resulting in the shimmering surface hues that are so distinctive to her work. “I am a bit of an obsessive about palette knives” she says, expressing the typical zeal that artists feel for the tools and materials that facilitate their creativity in the studio. “My favourite is the diamond blade Blue Acorn 11”
Photo: Emma Freeman Portraits
‘Dreaming of Polzeath’
‘Greenaway to Stepper’
‘Padstow’
on Board
A: 25cm x 25cm |
37cm x 37cm
‘Harbour Walls’
on Board
25cm x 25cm | F: 37cm x 37cm
‘Magical’
on Linen Canvas
60cm x 60cm
72cm
72cm
Suki’s preferred surface is primed linen canvas, sometimes medium texture, sometimes fine, each of which in their way support the creation of those shimmering speckles of colour as Suki skims her palette knife across the surface. “I have canvasses stretched for me in St Just” and I use a mixture of Michael Harding and Old Holland oil paint. “Because my work is so influenced by the landscape, my favourite colours change with the seasons.
If I had to pick the most expressive and beautiful colours though, it would be Michael Hardings’ Kings Blue Light, Titanium Buff, Old Holland Warm Grey and Blue Grey.”
After walking the coast for inspiration, in the company of her two devoted hounds, Suki lets her instincts and the simple process of painting lead the way back at the easel. “When I am painting seascapes I decide on my base colours and then cover the canvas using thinned oil paint, working and blending colour into the surface with cloths, almost always with the line of the horizon in mind, and I let the image emerge. With my abstract works the palette will be much less restricted and I will choose colours as I blend, often with paint straight from the tube, and let the marks and colours suggest shape and form”.
When asked for her favourite view of the North Coast she says simply “Polzeath, and its beautiful surroundings. What I love more than anything, though, is the wet sand left by a receding tide, the way it captures and reflects light and colour in a million ways”.
Is it hard to let a work go, once she has poured all her passion into it and declared it finished? “I have an attachment to all of my paintings and yes there is a reluctance to let go however the delight one feels when another person loves my work is affirmation enough.”
Time, Polzeath’
Sorbet’
on Linen Canvas
60cm
Fret’
Linen Canvas
