'I'm very lucky in that I am able to recall memories from an early age. The earliest of which is a visual experience, or should I say delight, that took place before I could even roll over as a baby. Placed on my parents' bed late in the afternoon with the window opposite, I laid there transfixed by the dappled light reflecting on the window-pane from the leaves of the tree outside. Yes I am a visual person and creating imagery has been an important aspect throughout my life, from the charcoal drawings I did down on the back fence and finger painting at kindergarten, (and my insistence when the photographer came to do the kindergarten photos that I should be photographed in the act of creating), to drawing as a teenager and eventually pursuing the lust with a life commitment to becoming an artist through formal training. To not create, to not experience those moments of exhilaration, like that gained from the pregnant pauses in time-based work and is also achieved in other forms of art, would be the death of my soul.  

So what excites me? Sitting on the edge of expectation, where visual experience becomes visceral experience, not knowing what or when it will come, anything is possible in that moment. And when it does come, WOW! And as much as it is sought, the experience can never be relived.

People often ask me how do I know when my work is good, when it is worth saying that it is finished. I know when a drawing, a video piece or a painting is there, because each time I view it, wow, a new experience of viewing it exists. If the work continues to thrill me as the artist, as its creator, then it has reached its conclusion. And there are many pieces created by me that don't do that, people just don't get to see them. They are substandard and as an artist to show them would detract from my works that are exceptional. It's all business, when one wants to be great at what they do they don't accept anything less. High standards, expectation of perfection, yes I'm guilty and while it is a fault in my personal life it stands me in good stead in my professional life.

And so to my influences, attributing one's work to an influence seems almost archaic or to an extent inhibiting as each of us take in influences from a multitude of aesthetics and in a multitude of ways. Each day, each experience, informs and impresses and leaves a remnant of itself within our deep psyche that at any time can surface with or without warning. As such, I cannot say that my work is influenced by any individual artist, person or experience. What I will say is my work is a culmination of bits and pieces taken from a diverse range of experiences and inquisitions.  Everything that I have done informs it. For me the boundaries are indistinct between film/video, drawing, sculpture, painting, dance, theatre, and music, they are malleable.  

There are works that have led me down paths of inquiry such as William Raban's film Fergus Walking, part of his work Autumn Scenes, Arthur Boyd's pastel drawing St Francis being beaten by his father, or Adrian J. Ebell's 1862 photograph Survivors of the Sioux uprising in Minnesota. Then there are the works, or should I say methods and approaches, of my fellow students when I was studying at Claremont School of Art, Robyn Brien's method of drawing a cross to make her mark, the energy that existed where the two lines crossed was amazing, or Kam Thong's constant rub back in charcoal. Being exposed to the energy while in the presence of them working also pushed me to find other ways to express the medium that I was using. I've spent decades learning about charcoal and am still learning new things about the medium. And there is what Nic Compton once wisely said to me,, "don't try to be too clever, that's the problem most artists have when they leave art school". He was right.'

sue.k.

April 2007