Susan Mealing - Artist / Printmaker

Cambridge based Artist / Printmaker. I work in both 2D and 3D using a combination of traditional printmaking methods such as etching, screen-printing and lithography as well as contemporary giclée digital printing. I work with various materials which include paper, plaster, fabric and wood.

Portfolio

Selous

Varanasi Series - Viscosity Prints

Collographs

Plaster Prints

Screenprints

Digital Prints

Etching with Chine-collé

Etching

Statement

My main interest lies with the flawed and disdained. My work embraces imperfection and impermanence, and the wabi sabi belief that nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect is fundamental to my philosophy and aesthetics. A strong component of these concerns draws me towards both entropy and the accidental, and these aspects are important in my approach and method of working.

The Collographs, Plaster prints and Screenprints are part of the vanitas and memento mori series. This work explores the contemporary struggle with the perceived sentimentality of the beautiful and the decorative, and its particular relevance to the depiction of flowers. The initial starting point is the ugly and rejected which is represented using weeds and dying decaying plants. The intention of the work is to transform these objects into images of beauty creating a metamorphosis from which they are elevated to the status of Fine Art.

The Viscosity prints make up the Varanasi series. Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges is considered the holiest city in India. For Hindus to die there is to achieve salvation and funeral pyres are constantly burning. The city is bustling and chaotic, busy with people working and performing their daily rituals and ablutions in the river. At dusk the city transforms, becoming still and beautiful, the surface of the Ganges changes to a silver sheen and the flaming pyres create vibrant gold reflections revealing the spiritual, ethereal quality of the old city.