Susan Dutton

Exhibition title: ‘Art & Language’

Exhibition Preview night: Saturday 8th May starting from 7pm till 10pm

Exhibition dates: Starting on Tuesday 11th May till 5th June

Curated by Lloyd Gill

Art and language is an exhibition that will showcase artists who use language as a secondary form of communication within their art. The artists selected for this exhibition have produced excellent quality work which is for sale. One Artist, Sandy Sykes has her work held in Tate Britainand the MOMA in New York to mention a few.
We at the gallery feel privileged to have such recognised artists show at the gallery. All the selected artists are unique in their response to using language in art. There will be an exciting array of work from artists all over the UK and Internationally.

Stella Dore London and Dublin, Artport Berlin,and Light Sentence Munich.

Susan Dutton

Susan grew up in southern California. After high school, Susan went to Cal Berkeley to study German and art. Susan then left the USA for Hamburg in 1962 and attended an art school until 1965. She wanted to leave her home to see the world and all the things it offered. After a few years, she was married and had two children. We lived in several European countries, plus a few years in New York. Susan worked as a graphic designer and illustrator in all of these places, with the exception of 13 years in Italy as an international saleswoman for the Middle East. When Susan retired in 2002, she began to draw and paint again. Her subjects are portraits, self-portraits, Madonna’s, nudes (male and female), erotic cartoons and landscapes. Susan’s technique is varied: oil, acrylic, tempera, watercolor, pen and ink. Her work is on paper and on canvas.
Text for Susan’s motivation for the ciao ciao series
The first drawing was the female figure wearing lingerie ( “I am too old for you”) . It is a sort of self-portrait and here Susan is complaining about a lost love who told him ‘I was too old for him’. So, as sort of declaration that Susan was still attractive and furthermore to challenge younger men who often court older women, Susan added the text to the drawing. Susan liked the “cartoon” idea, so She continued to draw others, using the same formula.
During the same period, since Susan was alone and wanted to meet a new man, Susan signed up for a chat-meeting web site. This became a frightening experience because the contacts were cynical, rude, infantile or evasive and in almost all cases, frightened of meeting a flesh and blood woman. They preferred a virtual contact via “messenger” and web cam, obviously with erotic connotations.
The entire experience disgusted her and the idea of seeing a frightened stranger on the computer screen trying to have some sort of rapport with me was awful.
So the theme of the series (20 drawings) is the superficial communication between men and women on meeting/chat web sites and the impersonal greeting “ciao ciao” became the title . Each work starts and ends with this text and has various clichés according to the situations that arose.

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Susan Dutton, Ciao Ciao series, Sono troppa vecchia per te, watercolour on paper,

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