Artist Statement

My practice investigates the physical and metaphorical spaces we inhabit, with a particular focus on how domestic interiors absorb and mirror emotional states—especially grief and collective loss. These environments become containers of memory, echoing with the spectral presence of the past.

Initially rooted in painting, my work now extends into installation, sculpture, and object-based assemblage, evolving toward a more immersive and multi-sensory engagement. Using vibrant colour and tactile materials—acrylic on canvas and plywood, as well as found domestic objects—I construct environments that defamiliarize the everyday. Playful palettes contrast with hauntological undertones, and layered surfaces expose their own histories, echoing the fragmented narratives that accumulate in lived-in spaces.

Repeated architectural motifs—doorframes, windows, stairwells—act as distorted anchors, suggesting both refuge and disorientation. These are no longer just painted elements, but spatial interventions that spill into the viewer’s path, inviting physical navigation and psychological reflection.

I aim to create installations that function as thresholds—spaces of pause, rupture, and contemplation. By shifting scale and medium, I want to complicate our relationship to the so-called ‘familiar’, prompting a re-examination of the domestic not as a site of comfort, but as a stage where vulnerability, memory, and loss silently accumulate.

Susan Jessop
2025