“Susie David explores water in its many forms with an enthusiasm that is as infectious as the work is captivating. Her work draws creative energy through accepting and embracing tension and uncertainty and through surrender to processes beyond her control.
In many ways David's work is a collaborative endeavour between herself and water, allowing the steam or the tides, falling rain or still waters to shape and respond to the ink she pours into it, the paper she leaves under it, the lens she points towards it. The work is as delightfully unrestrained by form as her subject matter is by use…There is a continual sense that water, frequently domesticated and controlled, is - like life - ultimately unknowable and un-containable…
While delighting in and affirming life through interaction with water, its metaphors and its poetry, the threat of the unknown and that which can never be controlled is a constant presence in David's work – an intriguing and at times intimidating unknown just beneath the surface.”
Darren Harvey-Regan
I experience water as sanctuary in a busy world. In my paintings I echo water’s qualities, and I believe this is why they too seem to open up space for a similar meditative experience. As Mark Rothko said:
A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.
Even when I was very young I found sanctuary in water. As a toddler I used to escape to sit in the cascade that tumbled into the pond, and watch the water playing in the light - my favourite toy - a squidgy rubber crocodile in my hands. I also found sanctuary in painting.
I suspect these two experiences are linked in me beneath my skin, beneath the surface of things - experiences that alchemise through me into the work.
It was during my MA at Plymouth University that this connection came out so powerfully into the light. At this time, I lost my old studio, and instead of giving up, I decided to embrace the experience (as water would) and use the big outdoors to be my studio. I began making my observatory films - both underwater and over water (which toured widely in many prestigious exhibitions). I also began taking observatory notes and editing them as if water would - into poetry. The poems have also been published, filmed with funding such the auspicious Arts Council, and recited in the company of great poets notably Alice Oswald. Great poets also number my many collectors including the poet laureate Andrew Motion.
I also decided to make works with water itself to learn water’s ways of being. This lead to many ink works on paper, that have been collected and shown widely.
All these fortunate experiences gave me the opportunity to work with water closely, and learn water’s way of being. A way of being often used in Japanese and other Eastern philosophies such as Wu-wei - the Zen tenet of going with the flow, and Alan Watt’s teachings of The Tao in his essay: The Water Course Way. Water not only teaches me how to be a better me and make my work - to be more fluid, more playful, more wild, but it also teaches me it’s aesthetics.
Now I am based in The South Hams, South Devon, I continue my face to face communing and working with water, I also have a painting studio where I can put into practice the things I have learnt using pigment and fluid. The water mindset I have nurtured within myself, I now endeavour to paint - as if I were water - painting.
I emulate water’s fluidity, being in the moment, spontaneity, aesthetics, and at times, irreverence - antidote to a world too rigid and logical. A world that tries to make too much sense, thereby losing the magic. Sometimes we need a little imagination and a little mystery in our worlds - things left not wholly explained. I also the insight use water strategies in making my writings that sometimes look a little like poetry.
Water seems to teach me how to be more fluid, more in the moment, more fluid and free, and interestingly - more earthed. Ironically water seems to benefit not only me, but others. 6 years ago, I set up a swimming group called The Sprats to encourage people in my local community to swim all year round (and not alone for safety’s sake). I notice it makes everyone feel well and I believe it healed me from migraines I had since childhood.
I find water has so much to teach me as an artist and as a human being, and I am not the first to think this - The wisdom that comes from water, is ancient and contemporary.
Lao Tzu said in the Tao Te Ching about likening the psyche to water:
Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles
and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?”Susie David
