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SUSIE HAMILTON
ECSTASY
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In the life drawing class at St Martin's in 1969 we had a model who played a witch in Polanski's 'Macbeth'. She was the one we most enjoyed drawing because her shapes and contours were lavish and excessive. Her flesh spread and rolled and fell in exciting and surprising ways as she sat on a stool or bent forward over the mattress. She also had a strong, assertive, sometimes menacing presence.
Years later on the beach at Berck-sur-Mer I noticed similar women and started drawing and painting them as they sunbathed. I was captivated by their shapes and the way the light fell on them casting shadows. I was also drawn to their strength, defiance and authority. They became part of my 2004 series of ‘Beach’ paintings.
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When I got back to London I felt inspired by the figures I’d seen on the sands at Berck but I wanted to make wilder images, I wanted more exuberance and exhilaration. 'Ecstasy' describes the erotic poses of my figures and also the way in which they were painted. I enjoyed the slabby way of putting on expanses of paint/flesh, followed by quick lines that enclosed these flattish areas. And then, in contrast to linear limits made in charcoal, pastel or pencil, I poured veils of diluted acrylic to flow in layers over the boundaries of the figures. My fluid technique was connected to my ‘Mutilate’ paintings of 2000 in which I floated thin, white layers of acrylic onto black canvases creating a scarred, translucent, x-ray effect to suggest mutation and mutilation.
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My paintings of the women do not however have the ghostly mournfulness of the ‘Mutilates’, their mutation is more Bacchanalian. They were influenced both by descriptions of the Maenads in Ovid’s account of the Bacchanalia in 'Metamorphoses' and also by one of my favourite artists, Cy Twombly. In his Dionysian/Bacchanalian works, swipes and smears and gashes cancel rectangular and orderly forms to express uninhibited life and energy. Scribbling and erasure destroy settled shapes and any idea of completeness in this restless, wild sweep that conveys the idea of continuous process.
'Ecstasy' is connected to this since its Greek origin, ekstasis, means 'outside of oneself'. My figures are ‘going outside themselves’, because of their sexual poses and expressions and also because they are painted in a way that, as Shakespeare said of Antony's passion for Cleopatra, 'o'erflows the measure'. They are made with messy, liquid, streaming paint and with the addition of blots, blooms, stains and dribbles. For me the use of mess is an ecstatic method of painting. Just as the ecstatic figure is extended and dissolved in frenzy or delight, this use of mess disrupts, dissolves and overthrows calm and finished images. It suggests liberation and possibility with its joyful riot of defacement.
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Susie Hamilton, Berck-sur-Mer 10, 2006£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Berck-sur-Mer 18, 2006£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Berck-sur-Mer 3, 2008£ 500.00
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Susie Hamilton, Berck-sur-Mer 5 SH78 , 2004£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Berck-sur-Mer 21, 2007£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Berck-sur-Mer 9, 2008£ 500.00
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Susie Hamilton, Berck-sur-Mer 19, 2007£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Berck-sur-Mer 20, 2007£ 600.00
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ecstasy
works on paper
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 34, 2006£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 26 SH3 , 2006£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 18 SH196 , 2008£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 24 SH140 , 2006£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 19 SH200 , 2008£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 32, 2008£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 22, 2006£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 12, 2006£ 500.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 16, 2006£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 35, 2007£ 750.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy, 2006£ 500.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 2, 2004£ 750.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 3, 2006£ 500.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 4, 2006£ 300.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 7, 2006£ 500.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 6, 2006£ 500.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 5, 2006£ 500.00
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Susie Hamilton, Minnie/10, 2005£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton, Topaz, 2006£ 500.00
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Susie Hamilton, Ecstasy 25 SH202 , 2008£ 600.00
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Susie Hamilton : Ecstasy
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