Artist Focus :: Susan Laughton

June 2023
  • Private art galleries in Edinburgh

    This month we are focusing on gallery artist Susan Laughton and some new available works.

     

    Laughton’s long standing interest in landscape and architecture has always inspired her painting and drawing. Vernacular buildings, both rural and urban, domestic and functional are a source of geometric, architectural forms. 

  • Edgeland I & II  are inspired by the cliffs and harbour villages of North Yorkshire, where Laughton spent a few days in the coastal village of Staithes, on a residency. Having enjoyed working with flat transparent areas of colour over, and contrasting with the texture of the plywood, Laughton developed this on larger scale for Edgelands with plaster. As well as the aspects of process, colour and material the paintings also have an emotional aspect, in that she wanted to both express a sense of a shelter, although she does feel they have become more monumental and rock like in scale.

  • Of moor & sky I & II are inspired by the hills and moors of the Peak District that Laughton...
    Of moor & sky I, acrylic and plaster on plywood, 40 x 90 cm

    Of moor & sky I & II are inspired by the hills and moors of the Peak District that Laughton often walks and drives through. Taking photographs whilst as a passenger in a moving car provides simplified versions of the passing landscape, blurring details and elongating horizons.

     

    " I want to express the sense of travelling to the experience of travelling through a landscape with a panoramic sense of scale and distance. Edges are once as again important as the subject: the light at the end of the day and the silhouette of the hills against the sky. The painting as an object itself also explores edges: using linear elements to frame the view and surface imperfections to bring in details of the physical landscape - stone, mud and weathered wood."

  • Cool still morning explores edges and atmospheric light in the landscape. Edges in the time between night and day, edges along the horizon and between rural and suburban.

  • Laughton worked in architecture for twelve years before returning to education to study art, graduating with a BA Hons in...
    Susan in her studio in Cheshire
    Laughton worked in architecture for twelve years before returning to education to study art, graduating with a BA Hons in 2002. She currently works from Vale Artists Studios in Cheshire.