REVIEWS
Dr Colin Self DFA (London) Dr of Letters (APU)
Nomination for the Sovereign European Painting Prize 2005
“Susan’s paintings radiate a special and divine kind of presence. A soothing, engaging, sophisticated atmosphere to be around. On first viewing Susan Gunn’s paintings every argument and reason I’d formulated over the past four decades was seduced, overturned, reversed; which speak of the powers of her wonderful art, of its utter rarity.
(On her paintings)
They are like chants or minimalist music, hypnotic, cathartic, releasing ones own inner ‘visions’ one never knew were present. They are somehow pure, quietly charged, they are Zen; a releasing agent of mood and memory. They are not backdrops, stage sets or screens but mysterious, cathartic presences.No modish assault on the senses here or urge to shock - something high is at work”
Amanda Geitner
New Ground Exhibition - opening event 2016
"Her work conjures notions of alchemy which is concerned with the transmutation of matter, a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation or combination. Her work is mesmerising and so interesting to observe over a period of time. The more you know the materials, the more fantastic it is. It’s the idea of control and chance and its that risk that is so impressive. I’m interested in artists who find an area of expertise and fascination over a period of time and continue to explore its possibilities."
Nicola Johnson OBE
Terra Memoria, Commission - Public Opening UEA (2015)
“Susan’s work is an absolutely wonderful example of how incredibly complex simple things can be and also how incredibly simple complexity can be…”
Polly Checkland Harding | Is seeing Believing? Part One 2017
“Gunn encourages the interpretation of her work to be metaphorical or philosophical rather than literal or autobiographical, nonetheless they evoke Oscar Wilde’s assertion that, “every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion.” Gunn does not paint portraits but she does, she admits, reveal herself through practice: the cracks in her paintings are purposeful accidents. The surfaces are provoked to breaking point, but just about holding together. How, then, to look at them, at her? As contradictory? Certainly, but richly so...”
John French - Director and CEO of Adapt
“Susan’s artwork perfectly resonates with the building’s low-carbon, sustainable ethos. It will have a major impact on all users and visitors to the Enterprise Centre.”
Michael Benson - Writer, producer, editor & director – Candlestar
“Susan Gunn’s work relies on texture, skilfully utilising a number of different materials to create tectonic contours on the surfaces of her pieces. There is a very precise and formulaic notion to her paintings coupled with an underlying aesthetic that hints at chance and coincidence..”
Crossroads - International Women's Day Exhibition - 2011
Ian Collins (Eastern Daily Press; Sunday 07 July 2010
Review Salthouse Fine Art Exhibition, 2010
“A major new work by a great abstract Norfolk Artist – Susan Gunn. A surface of gold leaf, gesso, pigment and wax which hangs in the tower as a perfect meditation on ancient and modern and a timeless hymn to light. Not for the first time, Susan Gunn would win this critic’s prize for best work in a Salthouse show.”
Andrew Moore - Keeper of Art - Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery - Solo Exhibition 2009
"The surface of a Gunn painting has a tectonic quality, the plates of colour having moved to create cracks and crevices, before coming to rest in a lasting ground, just as the earth has formed in moments of heat and cooling"
EDP - Feature by Ian Collins
Sir Peter Blake - Artist
Sovereign European Painting Prize Exhibition at Bonham's, London 2006.
“I think she is a very talented Artist - her paintings are incredibly beautiful objects”
Cherry Smyth - Curator, writer, art critic & poet
Stay Exhibition Publication - The Great Eastern Hotel, London (2004)
"a carmine-coloured painting whose subtle surface textures speak of an overt male world of leather bound clubs, but also a subversive powerful female reality that links it to blood and veins which appear to work below the surface".
Eastern Daily Press - The Editor (2006)
“Spirited and spiritual, beautiful and haunting…”
Ian Collins - Author & Arts Critic
"Gunn has created an iconic collage meditating on the Madonna and child, angels and air. This is a great artist in the making."
Salthouse - North Norfolk Exhibition Project curated by Liz Falconbridge - EDP 2005
Ian Collins - Author & Arts Critic
Norwich Castle Museum RA selected summer exhibition, Norwich (2004)
“Exquisite work…this is a great artist in the making”
Cherry Smyth - Curator, writer, art critic & poet
Stay Exhibition, The Great Eastern Hotel, London (2004)
“In Gunn’s paintings there is a subtle tension between the golden section formalism of their geometry and the unruliness of the free-form cracking. They each balance control and abandon, deliberation and chance. This is not the frivolous feminine but the ferocious one, celebrating healing from trauma and taking up space, unapologetically…majestically. Her visceral, loaded work has the monochromatic discipline of Robert Ryman and the meticulous abstraction of Callum Innes”
Rob Haynes - Art critic/editor (METRO)
Philips Gallery Group Exhibition, Manchester (2004)
“Susan Gunn perhaps steals the show…Stare a while and the cracked areas look like satellite views of mountain ranges, slowly exerting the same kind of peculiar hypnotic fascination that the monolith of Kubrick’s 2001 did over our pre-human ancestors.”
Professor Tim Birch - Arts Editor (Citylife Magazine)
Philips Gallery Group Exhibition, Manchester (2004)
“The eye-catching impact of Susan Gunn’s painting lies in its big, bulky scale and - improbably, its reliance on black – for striking results. Her painting, and interest as the gallery’s new artist makes Gunn the standout.”
The Bishops Art Prize, Norwich Cathedral 2003
"Susan is a fine artist. This is high quality work. She's captured the reality of the crucifixion, but also conveyed the tenderness and love at the heart of it in the material she has used."
Heidi Hadley - Art Critic - Director Culture First
Gesso - Dark Mirror Gallery Solo Exhibition, Norwich (2003)
“Heavily worked surfaces dominate, reminiscent of the patina of old worn Chesterfields into which you can visually sink”
WRITINGS
Critical essay by Robert Priseman - The Beauty of Imperfection
External source: The Priseman Seabrook Collection
'No beauty without imperfection' …. a text by curator Amanda Geitner to accompany An Appetite For Risk Exhibition
Critical essay by Cherry Smyth - STAY
INTERVIEWS
Painters Today - PODCAST
Process & Rituals | Susan Gunn in conversation with Lucy Cox
Painter to Painter - Contemporary British Painting
Susan Gunn in conversation with Katherine Russell
An interview with ROBIN COUPLAND for the international art blog 'Talking Beautiful Stuff'
MEETING SUSAN GUNN | TALKING BEAUTIFUL STUFF 2016
External source: Talking Beautiful Stuff
Q & A Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery - Solo Exhibition 2009