Not All Art is Created Equal

This was not designed as a 'Work of Art' – it just is!

(I am sure the artist, our Suzanne (Sue) Cluse, held no particular hopes for outcomes/recognition/satisfaction before launching into this, a ten minute 'quickie' at Portrait Practice last week)

Within the work, the very useful likeness that is displayed should be quite rewarding. The subject, with one unseen foot high on a unseen stool, appears perched a little precariously, perhaps uncomfortably. Again, rewarding. But more than these things, the work says so much about what it set out to do - and about what it didn't need to do.



Sue has allowed herself the freedom not to demand exactness, but to see the whole and to concentrate on capturing it in its essence. Simple to say .. hard to do. Like so much in Art, inspiration tends to come only after much perspiration. The wonderfully engaging 'looseness' of this drawing still demanded close awareness of composition, proportion, perspective, variation, line, tone and depth – and the clock!


I haven't asked, but I hope that this drawing has provided Sue with that little inner elation that comes in the moment that you know that your work has 'worked' and also, perhaps, from knowing that someone else thinks that it has worked. Knowing that Sue has only of recent been actively pursuing this approach, to get an outcome like this must be a real 'buzz' and, rightly, should provide great encouragement.


A ten minute drawing that only took five or six years work. Sometimes, effort rewards...
Well done and congratulations. (Don)




(Post Script:
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