Suzanna Reynolds

My practice is an excavation of the subconscious—a visceral dance between control and surrender, where charcoal and paint become conduits for truths buried beneath the surface. I do not create; I unearth. Each stroke, whether the violent scrape of charcoal or the fluid bleed of paint, is a dialogue with the unknown, guided by intuition rather than intention. The materials lead, and I follow, trusting the chaos to reveal what language cannot. In the grit of charcoal I find a primal language. Large, gestural marks—swaths of black that claw and smudge—carry the rawness of exposed nerve endings.The medium’s physicality lingers: dust coats my hands long after fixing, a reminder that the subconscious leaves stains no solvent can erase. Here, erasure is as vital as mark-making; rubbing away layers becomes a metaphor for peeling back memory, desire, and dread. **Paint**, newly embraced, offers a counterpoint—a containment of chaos. Where charcoal breathes impermanence, acrylics crystallise moments. Yet even in this solidity, spontaneity rules. Pollock’s frenetic drips and Twombly’s scribbled myths echo in my approach: a baptism in accident, where “mistakes” morph into inevitabilities. The canvas becomes a battleground of tension—between the visceral smear and the deliberate line, between what is exhumed and what remains veiled. Four decades in social work taught me to hold space for the unspoken—the grief, rage, and resilience etched into human bodies. My art now wields that same empathy, not to document, but to *translate*. These works are not about experience; they are its echo. They invite viewers to confront their own buried fragments, to recognise the haunting in a blur of graphite or the catharsis in a fevered brushstroke. ‘To engage is to risk’.Some recoil; others find solace. But always, there is a reckoning—a mirror held to the shadow