Paintings

Creating scenes that bubble with imagination, Susan Hitching imbues her paintings with a rich underlying narrative. The artworks resemble moments glimpsed in fairytales or fever dreams, often fizzing with such barely contained energy that it seems her subjects are on the brink of skipping from the canvas in search of new adventures.

Taking in ‘A Choreography of Swans’, I can almost hear the clacking beaks and rustling feathers, while ‘Bird Catchers’ feels like a voyeuristic sight observed while crouched between hedges and in fear that one of the reaching tree-maidens might turn and meet my gaze. However pretty the artwork, there’s always a sense of the primitive, the untameable, and even, in some cases, a delicious hint of the sinister.

Hitching’s art brings to mind Paula Rego’s unsettling illustrations, particularly in works like ‘Ripened Fruit’, but Hitching’s work offers a lightness – her wild creatures are joyful in their freedoms, and in some paintings, ‘Woman of the Hens’ included, there is a distinct tenderness. There are emotional depths here as well as surface beauty. Utterly enticing.

Review from Judy Darley, author and arts writer, http://www.skylightrain.com