Susan Pearson: Becoming Islands

Susan Pearson’s creative practice includes drawing, painting, print, and sculpture. She is interested in bodily connections to material through making, inspired by place, folklore and identity. Susan is from Whalsay in Shetland. She achieved First-Class Honours in Fine Art at UHI Shetland in 2023 and is currently studying for her Contemporary Art and Archaeology Masters with UHI Orkney.

Susan is curious about what is unearthed, and what remains hidden. Her work considers the perceptible as well as the imperceptible world. This led her to research the archaeological theme of wrapping as metaphor. Wrapping takes many forms, we wrap a gift in paper, a child in a blanket, the dead in a shroud. Hidden yet revealed, protected, concealed, contained, separated. Susan began to think of islands as earth wrapped by sea.

Many of these works are from her ongoing project, Becoming Islands, she uses locally gathered clay to explore human and non-human entanglements; the transformative power of materials; and (is)landscapes. She explores the ‘natural world’ with an understanding that it does not exist outside of human experience, it is entwined within us. She is inspired by the concept of becoming discussed by philosophers Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. The ongoing, ever-changing state of becoming involves a breakdown of the previous self to build up another self, or a multiplicity of selves, driven by society, culture, or environment. Susan applied this concept to (is)landscapes. We become-with the land, we attribute human traits, emotions, or behaviours to it. We name places after people. As seen in the story of the Viking woman, Geirhildr, said to be buried on the island in the Girlsta loch. Woman, wrapped in earth then water, land then sea. Woman becoming island.