Suzanne Holtom
Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you?
I don’t have a single woman artist of influence but several, for different reasons at different times. Eva Hesse, for her intelligent and intuitive response to materials, she interpreted the reductive aims of minimalism towards a more affecting, empathic result. When I was on my foundation I saw a show of Therese Oulton’s work at Marlborough called “Lachrimae.” These paintings drew you in to sweepingly romantic spaces, with rhythmical, seductive surfaces, and intricate colour work pressed into the canvas. A tutor at the time dismissed them as being a bit crocheted, and I thought, on the contrary, that was the most wonderful effect, to crochet paint into form.
Looking further back Rachel Ruysch for the sheer intensity she manages to bring to those small yet breathtakingly powerful flower paintings and today Pipilotti Rist for immersing you in a world of epic sensuality. The Barbican Lee Krasner show was fantastic and more recently artists like Katy Moran, Amy Sillman and Cecily Brown have been important.
I was also very fortunate to have some exceptional women tutors at Cardiff and the Slade; Tess Jaray, Carol Robertson and Mona Hatoum.
Women globally are far less represented in galleries and museums than their male counterparts. Have you yourself found the art world difficult to navigate as a woman or have you come up against any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all-women shows etc..? Why/why not? Have you noticed any changes?
I think the ‘art world’ is difficult to navigate for many people, especially if you have little experience or connection to its workings. How to make your work visible and how to sustain your practice are pressing issues to deal with but also who to approach and how to do this ‘appropriately’ seems at times, shrouded in mystery. Many artists do not arrive at art school with connections to, or knowledge of this system and start by supporting each other in group shows.
It is not only a question of women’s shows but what themes are represented within the work. In 2007 I was involved in a project called “Birth Rites” focusing on the politics and practice of childbirth. I was focusing my research on the hospital and personal experience, the relationship between technology and the body in child birth. I know the curator, Helen Knowles had a lot of trouble finding a venue for the work that was produced from 5 different artists. Childbirth, one of the most common, everyday experiences was just too difficult a subject to deal with for many galleries and still provides challenges for public presentation.
I think women are still under-represented in many collections but I feel that right now there may be some momentum to be showing more women’s work. In the last few years I have been to some retrospectives of important yet overlooked artists, Hilma af Klimt, Georgiana Houghton, Dorothea Tanning and Lee Krasner. I suppose the test is, if this is sustained and not just a fashionable moment.
When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?
I was always busy making and drawing things as a child, before I knew I wanted to be an artist. I was also very interested in dance, and I suppose that physical, performative aspect of painting is something I still value. I made the decision at 18 to become an artist.
Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (eg where are you from/based? What has your leducational path been like or are you self-taught?)
I initially studied art a few years after leaving school in Birmingham. The subject really opened up for me whilst doing the foundation course at Bourneville College of Art. There were no significant role models or any idea of what an artist is or how a life in art could function, and so I just took a leap of faith and enrolled. I don’t really remember conversations of ‘career’ as such, I just wanted the opportunity to think about and make art. I pursued the BA Fine Art course at Cardiff, then spent some time in Kenya and returned to do my post-graduate at the Slade. I think you are always in some kind of education as an artist. More recently I have participated in off-site programmes with Turps Art School – the motivation is to continue to be in a dialogue about painting with other artists – particularly at times of change, renewal and transition in my work.
What themes or ideas do you explore in your work?
I suppose there is an overriding interest in the creative tension between content and structure of the work. I do think in terms of narratives and themes to each series of paintings but the actual process of making is also the key idea. There is as much obliteration and erasure in the development of the paintings as construction, there is a lot of improvisation and structures are tested as much as composed. My paintings can go through radical transformations in the making.
The stories in Ovid’s metamorphosis are a recurrent source and sometimes just incidental moments from my memory can get reworked into narratives. Scale is important, epic themes colliding with the trivial or commonplace.
In Fortune and Folly, a solo show in 2019, Velasquez ‘Spinners’ was a starting point for several paintings. The theme of painting and weaving was central, layers of paint building a tapestry like surface connecting swipes, smears and tangles into shifting images and spaces. The narrative source focused on Arachne and Minerva to consider questions of creative ambition, the intoxicating forces of power and transformation and the contested relationship between art and craft. The paintings attempted to create a flickering vision of female artistry and industry.
Phaethon and festivals of Venus (Veneralia) are important themes in more recent work. In Ovid’s story of Phaethon, the impetuous son of Phoebus loses control of the horses and chariot of the sun creating chaos in the scorched and burning heavens and earth. Paintings by Rubens and the landscapes of Chuck Jones (Wiley Cayote and Roadrunner) have been instrumental for ideas of imagery, movement and theatricality. In ‘Changer of Hearts’ entangled marks suggest teeming appetites and sensuality, they play against inset visions of guilt and judgment as part of the ‘Veneralia’ series.
What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)
I make a lot of drawings, sometimes fragments from other paintings where I am looking at spaces and compositions, structures or at interesting marks and gestures from animations. I may then use charcoal or colour sketches to develop these as a starting point towards a painting. However, a lot of changes then take place and I have a range of moves that I make as a performative approach to painting. These are sometimes considered and constructed, at other times improvised and intuitive – everything is in play. I never really know how they will develop and this tension, I have learnt, is an essential if nerve-wracking part of the process. There seems to be a balancing act between spontaneity, complexity and structural efficiency .
The paintings are developed over weeks and months, I work on a few at the same time and the most difficult thing is when to stop. I now know that if I can leave a painting alone for a couple of months, then it is finished.
What have been your influences? (Anything in history? A particular work of art? Other artists? Landscape? Movies? Family/friends? Literature?)
The wonderful thing about making art is you end up wandering into unplanned, surprising territories. The space and structures in Baroque painting continue to be of interest, in particular Velasquez, Rubens and Tiepolo but also the anarchic unpredictability and abbreviated forms in animations.
Over many years I have researched perceptual and sensory differences, particularly in autism from a range of scientific and biographical texts. I wrote an article for Turps magazine exploring these in relation to histories of early modernist painting, focusing on the radical experiments of Braque and De Kooning. This comparison explored ideas of fragmentation, overload of sensory information, and peripheral perception, features that are considered and developed in my painting process.
Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist? (Not necessarily art-related) And why?
That is difficult as so many books have been important at different times but if pushed today then I would propose Austerlitz by W G Sebald. Simply a brilliant book; layered, complex, and visionary. It is also an incredibly visual book in its evocative descriptions of memories, impressions and experiences of the elusive characters. It is sweepingly ambitious and concerned with fragmentary, disorientating narratives and peripheral histories.
Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging?
Just keep going?
