Layered Perspectives: Susan Laughton and Bronwen Sleigh RSA

Layered Perspectives brings together the work of Susan Laughton and Bronwen Sleigh, two artists whose practices explore the meeting points between architecture, landscape, and abstraction. Both investigate how the built environment shapes our perception of space, yet their approaches diverge—Laughton through quiet, reductive paintings and drawings, Sleigh through materially rich printmaking, drawing, and sculpture.

Together, their works form a conversation about how we see, inhabit, and remember the spaces around us. In Layered Perspectives, geometry and gesture, precision and improvisation, converge to reveal that architecture is not only a matter of buildings—it is also a language of memory, place, and imagination.

Sleigh received her BA from the Glasgow School of Art in 2002 and MA from the Royal College of Art in 2008. She has worked for The Royal College of Art, The Royal Academy Schools as a Print Fellow and at Edinburgh Printmakers as their etching technician and collaborating printer. Sleigh now concentrates wholly on her practice and has exhibited widely both in the UK and overseas. Her work is held in numerous collections around the world.

Laughton uses a reductive approach to select and refine the intentional placement of linear and spatial elements. These deliberate forms are set against the more random physicality of different surfaces, whether they are hand applied layers of plaster or the grain of plywood that connect back to the built environment. The main geometric areas of the painting are first developed in her sketchbook, then engraved directly into the surface with an etching point to create a sgraffito effect.

Onto this foundation, multiple washes of paint are layered over the surface, and applied into masked areas, clinging to the plaster and acrylic in different ways. Laughton responds to these washes of colour with further sanding and etching of lines in conversation with the surface of the painting. This is a more emotional and subconscious approach after the methodical early stages.