22/08/2023 13 Questions for artist Susie Hamilton

Ahead of the 2023 Art Car Boot Fair, artist and Organ founder Sean Worrall asked Susie Hamilton 13 Questions about her practise and her brand-new series 'Icon of the Seas' 

We’re closing in on the 2023 Art Car Boot Fair, this year’s main live event happens at London’s Kings Cross in September. A long-standing feature and always a highlight in terms of the London art calender. Once again the fair boasts an exciting line up of participating artists including painter and Fair regular Susie Hamilton.  This year’s Art Car Boot Fair theme is Pop, The Art Car Boot Fair Goes Pop, Susie is approaching the theme with a series of paintings inspired by, in her own words, “gargantuan new cruise ship Icon of the Seas” Ahead of the Kings Cross event we asked Sue to become the twenty-first artists to answer out series of Thirteen Questions. once again the first twelve are questions we ask everyone, the thirteenth is, as always, more tailored towards the artist concerned.. 

Susie Hamilton’s paintings have been rewarding us for a number of years now, she’s taken part in a number of our Cultivate shows, something about her use of paint, the energy in her work, the things she sees, the way she communicates, the economy of it all. here then as Susie’s thirteen answers…  

1: WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU DO?

I paint, draw and make prints and I’m inspired by literature, especially poetry.

2: WHERE ARE YOU TODAY? WHERE ARE YOU MOST DAYS?

In my studio near Mile End, East London and I’m here most days.

3: WHO OR WHAT IS EXCITING YOU RIGHT NOW?

I’m enjoying the sharp, sordid language of Martin Amis’s London novels and looking forward to the autumn production of ‘The Elephant in the Room’, my husband, Peter Hamilton’s new play.

4: WHY DO YOU MAKE ART

To surprise myself and bring new ideas and images into being. Like an alchemist, to turn base metals into gold, ie negative experiences into art

5: HOW DO YOU WORK?

I draw people in supermarkets, on beaches, in streets and restaurants. The speed of observation transforms the figures to become more vulnerable or predatory through abbreviation and distortion. In the studio I use these drawings for bigger works, several at once, working on the floor so I can see them from all sides.

6: TELL US ABOUT THE ART YOU MOST IDENTIFY WITH?

The sour-sweet colours of Indian painting, the raw marks of Cy Twombly, the eerie piazzas of de Chirico, the transformation of people into hybrids and grotesques in Bosch and Brueghel, the turning of figures into mysterious lines and shapes in Kitaj. And, not forgetting Pop Art, I like its ironic ‘celebration’ of commercial objects: Mel Ramos’s nudes worshipping giant bottles of Coke or ketchup, Richard Hamilton’s pictures of fragmented women with domestic appliances, and Wayne Thiebaud’s sickly slices of synthetic cake.

7: WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT YOUR OWN WORK?

Energy. Metamorphosis.

8: WHAT DO YOU DISLIKE ABOUT YOUR OWN WORK?

When it looks clogged, tired or overworked.

9:  WHAT HAS BEEN THE HAPPIEST MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE SO FAR?

Finding my soulmate.

10: WHAT MAKES YOU ANGRY?

Falseness. Smugness. Trophy hunters. Sewage pollution.

11: WHICH SUPERPOWER WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO HAVE AND WHY?

Being in several places at once so I wouldn’t have to choose and exclude.

12: WHAT COULDN’T YOU DO WITHOUT?

My husband and my art.

13:  WHAT IS IT ABOUT “GARGANTUAN NEW CRUISE SHIPS ANYWAY?

Why go to sea to wander round a Disneyfied theme park? The excesses of ‘Icon of the Seas’ are an opportunity for me to paint candy-coloured pictures but I imagine the actual experience to be hellish, like being in a ‘Doom’ painting with all those thousands of people filling up the gaudy, infantilising zones of over-consumption. ‘Icon’ seems pure POP, like one of Hariton Pushwagner’s paintings. It’s marketed for non-stop ‘fun’ and so bright and shiny it hurts.

And finally, any future shows or events coming up that you wish us to tell people about?

A painting in the auction held by Hospital Rooms charity at Bonhams, London, a drawing of a tourist in the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, a three-person show at the Royal Geographical Society in November in which I’m exhibiting paintings of endangered species on recycled cardboard. Then in December I’m having a solo show for ‘Art in Focus’, organised by Imperial Health Charity across 3 London Hospitals.

This year’s Art Car Boot Fair, with a cast of over a hundred invited artists happens on Saturday September 16th, it will once again happen in London at Lewis Cubitt Square, Kings Cross. There’s an Organ preview and somebackground in terms of the rather unique rather special event and how it is a genuinely artist-friendly event here – The Art Car Boot Fair Goes Pop! The date of this Summer’s much anticipated live event has just been announced…

GET YOUR EARLY BIRD TICKETS NOW BEFORE THEY GO! ONLY £10!!!