Sue Lawty

Sue Lawty
Born 1954, Chesterfield, Derbyshire UK

Sue Lawty is a highly experienced artist, designer, and teacher, whose work is in collections worldwide including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London where she held a year-long residency. Prestigious Artist Research Fellowships include the Smithsonian Museums in the US and the University of Leeds. Lawty’s work is rooted in an emotional, spiritual, and physical engagement with the land. Subtleties of material and construction are explored intuitively and meticulously to build particular textual languages. Lawty’s work has appeared in numerous exhibitions in the UK and abroad, including the International Triennial of Tapestry in Lodz, Poland; the Bankfield Gallery and Museum in Halifax, UK; the Victorian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne, Australia and the Cheney Cowles Memorial Museum in Spokane, Washington.

Sue Lawty’s stone drawings are made from individual found marks: tiny water worn fragments of rock collected from the coast and laid out in rhythmic order.
"Rock and stone play a large part in my understanding for their embodiment of structure and time" says Lawty. "I am interested in refining an idea down to its essentials."

Within this repetitive construct we are invited to notice each distinct unique fleck, which, like ourselves; like every minute of time, is unrepeated and unrepeatable. Triginta Annis continues Lawty’s exploration of visualising number. In this work each stone mark represents one day; a total of 10,958 days laid out in three vertical decades. 

Sue Lawty, Triginta Annis (Thirty Years in Latin), 2017, natural stone on gesso, 27 x 26". Courtesy of browngrotta arts.

Sue Lawty image courtesy of V&A Images.
Artwork image courtesy of browngrotta arts.