Susie Dureau’s Embodied, from the series Fathoms, engages a method of cultivated curiosity: slowing down and attuning senses to the landscape, thereby accessing embodied knowledge that arises from thinking and feeling in unison. Embodied is a critique of the Western concept of substance dualism which separates mental and physical aspects of being. Instead, the work offers an insight into the human condition as a complex weaving of anatomies and minds, human and landscape together.

Susie says of this work: “The coastal landscape (the environment my body is intricately connected to) offers a compelling sensory field for me to explore my being – this is why I am drawn to it. My painting practice engages a method of cultivated curiosity: slowing down and attuning my senses to the landscape, thereby accessing embodied knowledge that arises from thinking and feeling in unison. 

“Nature speaks to me in nonverbal languages of light, colour, texture, temperature and tone; these are also the languages of painting. Painting is a collaboration between the sensory body, the mind and emotion, the material pigments and ground. Through the artworks in this exhibition, I borrow these languages to fathom a bond between myself and the landscape: a bond that is both commonplace and mystifying.”

Signed on the back.