Suzanne Halliwell

About

I am a mixed-media artist working from my studio in Bolton, Lancashire, trading as Quiet Thunder. My work is painted using watercolours on a non traditional background of raw canvas. Edges are left deliberately frayed to evoke a certain fragility. Hand stitch, metallic leaf and hand-stamped metal add to the stories drawn from myth and ancestry.

Statement

Everything I make is rooted in myth, memory, and the feminine. I am drawn to what cannot quite be said, the ancestral, the elemental, the deeply personal. The work sits at the intersection of beauty and pain, nature and metal, ancient and now. Contradictions held together, not resolved. I work with raw deckled edges, handwritten marks, quiet gold. The materials are chosen because they carry weight, because gold leaf has been pressed into devotional objects for thousands of years, because stitch is one of the oldest ways human hands have made meaning, because paper holds a mark the way memory holds a moment. Each piece is a contemporary talisman. Something to carry, return to, feel. I'm drawn to the unseen: memory, emotion, intuition, and the quiet forces that shape our inner lives. My practice explores how creativity can hold meaning, mark transitions, and offer a sense of grounding during times of change. I am the great-great-granddaughter of Edwin Ellis, a Victorian marine landscape artist who lived and worked between 1842 and 1895. He spent his life looking hard at what is fleeting - water, weather, light on the surface of things - and finding a way to make it stay. That inheritance runs quietly through everything I make. The impulse to catch what cannot be held. To find permanence in what passes.

Education

• 1990BA (hons) Embroidered Textiles, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester

Exhibitions

Commissions

I take various types of mixed media commissions. Please feel free to contact me to discuss and let's create something beautiful and unique to treasure.

Starting from $804