Printmaker Susan Aldworth recently invited us into her studio space, a second home of creativity nestled in her garden, where her printing press lives and her works come to life.

A practicing artist for over forty years, Aldworth’s background in philosophy deeply informs her work, allowing her to sensitively portray the inner worlds of those she encounters. Through her printing press, she brings her subjects’ psychological conditions to light with a profound sense of respect and understanding. "I enjoy the narrative. I love storytelling" Aldworth said simply.

 

Inside the studio, Aldworth began to walk us through her ideas and the processes behind each work. Hanging directly behind her prized possession - the printing press - are works from Susan's series Reassembling the Self, which focus on the experience of schizophrenia within the body, created during her time as Artist in Residence at the Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University. Susan explained that she didn't want to try to describe schizophrenia, "because they had it, not me', but instead wanted to make the audience "feel a bit strange" when viewing her work, choosing to creating an image of a body with all of it's parts in the wrong places, to encourage the audience to feel within themselves the link between body and mind.

Many printmaking approaches were present in the work throughout our visit with Susan. For instance, plate lithography, which involves "mixing photographic and drawn elements," as she describes it. She uses this method to convey complex themes, such as the brain, heart, and sex, in a single image, capturing the underlying chemistry between them. Aldworth is drawn to the technique because it allows her to create marks that cannot be easily replicated by hand. Alongside this, she incorporates materials such as hair, powder, wool, feathers, and other everyday objects, elements that are often overlooked but serve as staples in her practice, evoking the unexpected in her prints.

 

The 'self' remains an idea of great intrigue throughout Susan's work, as she stated herself "the self, the sense of self, who we are, is what I'm obsessed with, so I'm always calling my work something about the self." With her series The Entangled Self, Susan experimented with this concept through a focus on hair, and how hair can act as a signifier of 'the person' within an image. Susan used photo-polymer plates to create these works, sharing that the process was especially interesting as she had repurposed the plates with her etcher, so "they already had some marks on them, which I love, because it gives them a really deep sense of tone."

The use of hair as a signifier of the self or physical body runs throughout many of Susan's projects, including her Golden Slumbers series and The Dark Self monoprints.

 

 

Golden Slumbers was described by Aldworth as having evolved from 'exploring the process of sleep.' She states, 'I realised, while playing around, that the evidence of sleep is the imprint of the head on the pillowcase. You wake up in the morning with this visible sign of sleep,' she explains, referencing the divot in the pillow created by a resting head. 'I used a real pillowcase and worked on black paper, with the black paper representing sleep itself. I turned an antique pillowcase into a printing plate. The hole in the middle represents the "fall into sleep," because you cannot will yourself into sleep."

 

 

For her series Traces of Childhood, Susan used a similar method of using the clothes themselves as the printing plate, inking up a collection of Edwardian baby clothes, attained as an anonymous gift, and printing with them directly onto the black paper.“The clothes have been loved by the mother, worn by the baby, and so printing from them seemed to turn them into lovely objects. And again, I’m using hair and string, feathers, to suggest the person who was the baby, or even the love that the mother had for them.”

 

 

As Aldworth flipped through her works, describing each in rich detail, one piece in particular was deeply moving: Transition I (Study 2). For this work, Aldworth spoke with a patient about her experience of living with epilepsy, asking her to describe what the condition looked like from within. From the patient’s words, Aldworth conjured an image that gave form to the unseen, breathing life and validation into the patient’s perception of her own mind.

 

 

This visualisation of what is happening within the brain, unseen to us, is also what preoccupied Susan with her Brainscapes experiments. Susan worked with master printmaker Nigel Oxley, who she has collaborated with on many projects and printmaking investigations in the past, to create an image of the inner life of the brain. "The idea here was that - you have an idea at the back of your mind, and it grows and it grows, and then it comes to concept or a real thought. I was trying to visualise what thinking is, because I think the brain is so miraculous, that to me it's a miracle that we think." Working with aquatint processes, Susan and Nigel experimented with throwing white spirits and turps directly onto the plate, resulting in incredibly layered and detailed organic etchings - "explosions of chemistry."

 

 

In a series somewhat visually different from others she had shown us in her portfolio, Susan shared how she created her Respondences pieces, not through printing with metal plates, but with cardboard. With Respondences, Susan explored the abstract, and leant more into simple block colour and linear line, noticeably more minimal than her other works, but retaining the neurological, organic themes that are recognisable in her practice.  This suite of prints are a response to Victor Pasmore's 1974 'Correspondences' series, which Nigel Oxley actually worked on printing originally! Looking closely at the Respondences pieces, their cardboard intaglio plates become more apparent, the material having left small imprints all over the surface of the print, with the cardboard textures creating a sort of leathery, incredibly effective skin-like look to the printed paper.

Susan Aldworth has a unique ability to intertwine her psychological and philosophical background with her artistic practice. Her work is a deep exploration of the human experience, combining personal narrative and universal themes in ways that make the invisible visible. This studio visit served as a reminder of the power of storytelling, of how art can bridge the gap between our inner worlds and the world that we share.

You can view and purchase more of Susan Aldworth's works on her artist page HERE

 

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