Drawing lies at the core of Suzanna Reynolds' creative process- a visceral, physical and intuitive process that borders the alchemical. She works primarily in charcoal and mixed media on paper, often on a monumental scale. From childhood , she was drawn the possibilities of working large - as a girl of eight she would steal A4 sheets from her sisters' school notebooks , clumsily taping them together to make a surface big enough to hold the images she felt compelled to create. That instinct- to make something bigger than herself has never left her.
Today her process is one of intense layering, erasure, and emergence. She scratches onto the hard surface of the paper on a wall with charcoal, often snapping it with the vigour, then smudges, rubs, and presses into the surface with her hands, sometimes scraping back to be redrawn again. Her drawings are born through a cycle of making and unmaking each mark, yielding to the next, until unexpected forms begin to appear - shapes and figures she hasn't consciously drawn but that rise from the paper as if summoned. This is where the magic lies - in that moment of recognition, of finding something truthful in what has surfaced.
Working at scale means drawing becomes a full - body experience. It's not just mark-making - it's an embrace. Suzanna surrounds the work and the work surrounds her, pressing into it with her hands, her arms , her full body weight - like holding someone close. The drawing becomes a presence in the studio, a witness, a partner in dialogue. Its size matches hers. It meets her face to face. Drawing, for Suzanna, is demanding and intimate: vigorous, raw, tender and alive with the thrill
