SLWA Showcase

Birches  2009 [Fused and slumped glass bowl, 22 x 22cm, Private collection, York]

Genre:
Glass, painting

Artist’s statement:
For the last two years I’ve been part of the SLWA Steering Group, doing interviews with artists (scroll down the right of the SLWA webpage to find the interviews). After thirty years of teaching German, including 16 years in Higher Education, I’m now devoting all my energies to painting, glass-making, writing and translating.

Art background
Although my PhD was on contemporary teenage German literature I’ve researched and published widely in the field of European art and culture. In 2006 I completed an MA in German Art History at the Courtauld Institute, with a dissertation on paintings by a Gypsy forced to paint portraits for the Nazis in Auschwitz. Since 2002 I’ve done a number of courses in London and Ireland (where I used to work) on glass techniques, abstract art, ceramics, etching, drawing, painting and experimental knitting, and am a member of the Friends of RWS Sketching Group based at Bankside.
My childhood by the North Sea coast means I’m fascinated by the sea, water, light, and all forms of reflections. Unconventional materials appeal: I’m exploring the potential of a range of natural/found materials or objects, such as flotsam and jetsam, crushed sea-shells and washed-up seaweed.
Texture, colour and patterns are central to my work: I love to zoom in on the details of nature and buildings. In my glass work I experiment with ‘inclusions’, just as I like incorporating texture in paintings by using muslin, leaves, fabric, old maps or train tickets.

Artistic influences
The German Expressionists, Whistler and the Scottish Colourists. In my free time I teach as a Volunteer in the Education Department at Dulwich Picture Gallery, and also volunteer at Tate and the Estorick Collection. On my travels I love going to exhibitions and developing my own sense of artistic direction.

Contact:
susan.c.wood@live.co.uk

CV:
2006 MA in Art History (Courtauld Institute)
1994 PhD in German Literature (University of Sheffield)
1976 RSA Certificate in TEFL/TESL
1976 PGCEd (University of Leeds)
1972 MA Hons 1st Class German Language and Literature (University of St. Andrews)
Selected publications relating to art [all published under the name Susan Tebbutt]
2006 The Controversy over Dinah Gottliebova Babbitt’s Auschwitz Gypsy Portraits (Courtauld Institute – Unpublished MA dissertation)
2004 Co-editor with N.D.B. Saul, The Role of the Romanies (Liverpool University Press)
1998 Editor, Sinti and Roma: Gypsies in German-speaking Society and Literature (Berghahn)

Articles (full details available – contact me if you’re interested!)
2008 ‘Paul Gauguin and Wassily Kandinsky’
2005 ‘Stolen Childhood: Austrian Romany Ceija Stojka and her Past’
2004 ‘Disproportional Representation: Romanies and European Art’
2002 ‘Dark strangers: The role of skin-colour in images of the Gypsy in twentieth-century art’
2000 ‘Constructions of Europe in English and German picture-books’
2000 ‘ “My name in the Third Reich was Z: 5742”: The political art of the Austrian Rom Karl Stojka’
2000: ‘From Carmen to Coppersmith?: The Unity and Diversity of the Romani Culture in Europe’

Exhibitions
October 2009 SLWA exhibition at Dulwich Picture Library
Participation in forthcoming group exhibitions
January 2010 Brokers’ Bar, Leadenhall Market (Friends of RWS)
April/May 2010 Bankside (SLWA)
Autumn 2010 St Martin’s, Trafalgar Square (Friends of RWS)

Further examples of work:

 
Purple pillars  2009 [Fused glass panel, 24cm x 24cm]

 
Icy mountains  2009 [Fused glass panel, 25cm x 25cm]