The Stretch of Days

This intimate piece captures the stillness of the often-neglected areas of our houses that are often unseen. Susan has built up the marks and textures using rags and monoprinting onto the painting with found objects, stripping back and layering up the oil paint on the canvas. Oil on canvas, framed with a simple bordered lime-washed pine edging.  The framed size is  58 x 68 cm and the image size is 55 x 65 cm.

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Additional information

Medium

Oil on canvas

Year

2022

Original / Edition

Original work of art

Size

68 x 58 cm

Description

Susan Erskine-Jones was born near Cape Town and grew up in the shadow of Table Mountain where she studied painting and printmaking. Since making the UK her home for the last twenty-five years she has increasingly explored the themes of time, memory and identity.

She believes people respond to the familiar through the window of their personal history. The images she chooses act as an emotional vehicle to other times and places evoking those small but significant memories. These observations provide the springboard for her artwork.

The finished piece evolves through a process of building up and stripping down shapes and their relationships to one another. It is not enough to just describe the forms that have sparked the associations but she uses the quality of her marks and choices of colour to open out the visual poetry of the subject.

Susan builds up the image through layers creating familiar scenes gently infused with a sense of melancholia and timelessness suggesting what is missing – a human presence that has passed out of view.

‘Familiar objects, when looked at anew, can trigger memories and associations. I find these overlooked subjects compelling to explore because of the triggers they set off in each of us.’

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