PAINTINGS
Painting has become an increasingly important strand in Suzanna Reynolds' practice - a quieter but no less powerful voice than drawing, offering new ways to explore texture, colour, and presence. Though paint flows more fluidly than charcoal, her approach remains rooted in the physical, gestural energy of drawing. She often combines the two, incorporating charcoal directly onto her paintings., rubbing back, layering over, allowing fragments of the drawn line top remain visible beneath the pigment. This blurring boundaries gives her painted surfaces a depth and mystery - histories written and rewritten, forms emerging and dissolving like memory itself.
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Suzanna frequently works over older paintings, some from as far back as her early years, even incorporating works once made by her late husband. In those cases, the surface becomes site of quiet collaboration- a conjoining of lives, a tender echo. She often leaves a fresh trace his original mark visible beneath the new work, a gesture of honouring connection that adds a sense of mystery and life to the finished piece. When they were together painting side by side they always critiqued one another's work. Suzanna would often suggest changes - bring a little out here, lift the colour there - thereby defining her presence in even his earlier works. In reshaping them now. it feels like a continuation of that dialogue, a collaboration still unfolding across time.
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Texture is central: paint is applied, scraped back then reapplied - overpainting until the image unfolds its magic and begins to resonate. She has fallen in love with colour again although still maintaining a minimal palate. She recalls earlier days of hand making her own paints with linseed oil and pure pigment. Though she now works in acrylics for their immediacy and versatility, she hints that the future may hold a return to these roots. For Suzanna, Painting offers a more grounded, deliberate energy than drawing - it is an act of holding, affirming, then choosing. Where drawing may reveal what is hidden, painting anchors what is found. It is a stillness that remains, a voice that stays.
