“thirty years on a tricycle”

“The Tricycle has its three wheels - theatre, cinema and visual art, an idea that inspired the title of this

exhibition. My life seems to have three wheels, though in my case they’re art, poetry and family and friends.

This show coincidentally focuses on three areas of work: landscape, figure painting and portraiture. Without

all these various triangulations I’d probably be lost.

“Thirty years ago I came to the Tricycle to see the Liverpool Poets. Within a month my first exhibition “Flat

Earth” was showing in the Gallery, which has played a significant part in my life ever since. Ten years later

‘Sue, Realist’, my first collection of poems and drawings was launched in the Baldwin Room. More recently,

the Tricycle has hosted events for The Brondesbury Group, the NW London poetry group I convene and will

be hosting our 10th Anniversary reading on Friday 22nd June.

“In fact I’ve always had at least nine lives - though unlike a cat’s they’ve tended to run concurrently:

painter, printmaker, poet, sculptor, theatre designer, teacher, parent and arts administrator. Of ‘Flat Earth’

Richard Cork wrote, "Like many other women, Susan Whitmore is no stranger to the conflicting demands of

art and motherhood. Her exhibition at the Tricycle Gallery is dominated by figures undergoing sudden,

perplexing shifts of identity”. So in thirty years, apart from adding even more identities, nothing has really

changed.

“Recent exhibitions have centred on the Marina Baja mountains of Spain where I mentor a landscape

painting course every summer. I’ve recently joined Greenwich Printmakers and the show reflects a move

back into printmaking. The human body, trees, words and imagination are central to my work, and the figure

paintings in this exhibition are products of the Tricycle’s Thursday Life Class - which I mentor - and which

plays a central role in the lives of many local artists and students”.

Sue Whitmore

www.suewhitmore.co.uk

Sue Whitmore: ‘Thirty Years on a Tricycle’

21st May - 23rd June 2012

Tricycle Gallery

269 Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR

020 7328 1000 www.tricycle.co.uk

whitmore.susan@yahoo.co.uk

SUE WHITMORE

Contact: whitmore.susan@yahoo.co.uk

020 8459 6406 www.suewhitmore.co.uk

The Artist:

Studies: Fine Art at the Central and Wimbledon Schools of Art

Philosophy and History of Art at University College London.

Tutors : Tricycle's Thursday Life Classes.

Landscape weeks in the Marina Baja nr Alicante since 2002 (www.oldolivepress.com).

She has combined writing and the visual arts all her professional life. Landscape painting takes her all over the

world and her work is in public and private collections in the UK and abroad

Recent Solo Exhibitions:

‘Una Pintura Inglesa en la Marina Baja’

2009 Alicante University

‘Dark and Light’

2006 Pall Mall Deposit

“Dreamers”

2005 The Dissenter’s Gallery, Kensal Green

‘Escapement’

2005 Tricycle Gallery

‘Speaking Volumes’

2001 Tricycle Gallery

Member of the Greenwich Printmakers since

2009

She has exhibited with The Pastel Society and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Theatre design: She has completed many mural and theatre designs which have included five years with

W11 Children's Opera, two with AAC Opera for All, "Brilliant the Dinosaur" for Richard Stilgoe and many pieces

for director Chrys Salt including "The Last Obit" by Peter Tinniswood, (Edinburgh Fringe).

The Poet: A published poet, she convenes ‘The Brondesbury Group’, a NW London Stanza of The Poetry

Society and her last book of poems and drawings, "Sue, Realist" received critical acclaim for its interplay of

poems and drawings from the imagination. She has had work 'On the Buses' and Radio 4, winning their

'Alternative Christmas Poem' on ‘The Afternoon Shift’.

Art admin.: A founder member, then fifteen years Chairing Brent Artists' Register (now ‘Resource’) running

studios and exhibitions, liaising with the local authority and business.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS before 2000

‘Living with Trees’

1999 Tricycle Gallery

‘Artist in Jamaica’

1994 Harlesden Centre Group

’Recent Work’ – Cumbria

1993 Stables Gallery, Dollis Hill House

’Sue, Realist’

1992 Baldwin Room Tricycle Theatre

‘Images of Ireland’

1991 Tricycle Gallery

Selected Irish Landscapes

1991 Patrick Clemens Clinic, Central Middlesex

‘August in the Auvergne’

1988 Tricycle Gallery

‘Scapes and Spaces’

1985 Tricycle Gallery

‘Flat Earth’

1982 Tricycle Gallery ‘Personal Geology’

RECENT GROUP SHOWS

‘Experiencing Landscape II’

2011 Lauderdale House, Highgate

Affordable Art Fair

2011 GPA Battersea

“Second Edition”

2011 GPA National Theatre

“Greenwich Printmakers@Morley Gallery’ 2010

‘Experiencing Landscape’

2010 Lauderdale House, Highgate

Lonely Arts Club

2009 Norwich Millennium Forum