Susan Gent
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Susan Gent is an emerging visual artist from Adelaide, South Australia, Kuarna Land.

Currently completing the Bachelor of Visual Art at Adelaide Central School of Art, Susan’s early working life included several years as a Registered Nurse specialising in the operating theatre suite. She then studied a Bachelor degree in Visual Communication followed by a 25 year career as a professional graphic designer, specialising in book design.

Susan’s involvement in surgical nursing prompted an interest in natural and contorted views of the human form, while graphic design further developed her keen interest in composition and different ways of seeing.

Susan uses her mark-making and painting to explore the human form and its affinities and tensions with the natural environment. Her current artistic practice involves re-working her figure drawings in graphite and charcoal to find topographical aspects and forms, with an emphasis on skewed perspectives. She then responds to these forms by ‘cutting in’ with paint to further disrupt the shapes. Her curiosity is in the discoveries made during the process of seeking an uneasy yet dynamic interplay of body and landscape.  

Susan embraces the materiality of the unprimed board or canvas in the transcription of her drawings and, rather than completing an individual piece before starting the next, responds to a series as a group.