Sue Steele’s work has changed dramatically over the years, from her beginnings at GSA, rooted in a traditional painting practice, to working in a myriad of constantly evolving mediums, Sue has established herself as a mainstay of the Glaswegian art scene. In this new exhibition of work, Start Where You Are, Sue presents a series of portraits of her colleagues from Greencity Whole Foods in Dennistoun alongside a collection of mixed-media self-portraits, textiles, masks, and linocuts, all in the dynamic and avant-garde style we’ve come to expect from Sue, and we’re delighted to welcome her back to Six Foot Gallery.

Hiya Sue! Can you tell us how your artistic journey started?
It started in Lesmahagow High where I had a really good relationship with the art teacher there, Bill Olsen, and from there it went on to Glasgow School of Art, which I loved and thrived in. My motto was GO FOR IT!

Unfortunately towards the end it was all becoming a bit stale for me. I was still trying to find my identity at that time. I needed to move on. My influences were all rooted in punk rock and the traveller scene and I was looking for something new so that’s when I really immersed myself in travelling and took off to Europe, where I met with other like minded people who had the same way of making and showing art as I did.

While I was in Berlin, I ended up crossing paths with the Mutoid Waste Company, a performance arts group founded in London in the early eighties, and they became a huge part of my life, heavily influencing the way I thought about and made art. That led me to Mutonia, an arts commune in Rimini in Italy, and I became part of that collective of artists there. My work was always in the realms of outsider art but my training was in the ‘proper methods’ of painting and in very traditional ways of working – my working methods were very traditional and unfortunately so was I! BUT I kicked back against the traditional and that’s where my journey started, taking me through Europe to Mutonia. I was searching for something and all paths converged there.

I’ve recently spent more time in Scotland, catching up with some of the painters that I used to paint with, and I found that I still have that love of the traditional approach to painting. It was so refreshing to share time and space with people who speak your language.

How did you arrive at the theme of your exhibition?
Initially it was meant to be solely about the Greencity portraits but I felt I needed to be present within the exhibition too, so it grew to include my self-portraits and I also brought in a few elements of other mediums like collage, textiles and linocuts to represent me and the different aspects of my work. 

If I have some sort of block, I tend to try to shake things up by trying a new medium or a new subject matter. During one of these blocks I’d been thinking along the lines of travelling and the artistic journey, and a lino print saying ‘start where you are’ was what came out of it and on to the canvas.

What’s your favourite piece in the exhibition?
My painted self portraits. I created these during the Covid lockdowns when I was feeling quite isolated as an artist and losing my sense of self. I felt as if I had to be disciplined, to fight for my right to be an artist. When you’re getting no feedback or sustenance you end up in an artistic wilderness. I was beginning to doubt myself as a painter and I wanted to go back to basics to see if I could paint. Every day I would set up a still life or self-portrait and I would just give myself a short time limit, do it, and post the result on social media. The next day I went through the same process, and the next day, and the next day, and so on. Through that process I had a gauge of how good I was as a painter and I could see myself getting better. It felt like progress in a world that had come to a standstill. When I started I didn’t know if I could even remember how to paint. I was trying to be as realistic as possible – copying the still lives exactly, an exercise in discipline. Then I would post them on social media and didn’t look at them again. 

A couple of years later I revisited the self-portraits and thought they were AWFUL. To me, they didn’t work as paintings, they were just bad self-portraits, and looking at them transported me right back to the mindset I had during lockdown, of that need to be regimented and disciplined. So, I tore them in half! When I collaged them back together, they sang out to me and finally turned into something I could identify with. They sat around for another year or so until I got them professionally framed, and now they’re on display here. They tell the story of a very personal journey. They are finished.

Can you walk us through your painting process?
For the Greencity portraits I started with a photograph (it has to be a good photograph!), and A2 sheets of paper and acrylic paint. I worked very loosely, getting the overall idea of the person on the paper, then I’d go back and do another layer of acrylic, and then I’d tidy it all up with soft pastels. I do the portraits in two stages, possibly three. I don’t work more than that because then I feel it’s overworked and the portraits lose some of their dynamism and movement – you either get it within forty minutes or you don’t get it at all.

In my adult life I’ve continued to be drawn to the punk movement. I love its spontaneity, the reactivity of it, the fact that you don’t have to be good at what you’re doing but you have to feel it. I love the attitude and the rawness of punk and it’s that that I want to bring to a painting. If you work on it too much or get too good, then you lose it. Don’t hide your workings – I love to see the struggle on the page! That’s what creates the dynamics of a painting.

Which artists inspire you?
Most of the artists that have inspired me are my contemporaries, and mostly painters.  At art school there were Karen Strang, Rosemary Beaton, Cath Roberts, Debbie Lee, and then people like Eddie Stuart and Ross Sinclair all inspired me then and still do now. There was a lot of talent at GSA. I was really lucky that I took all my inspiration from my immediate environment – I didn’t have to go looking for it. My other influences were punk, the traveling scene, and the Mutoid Waste Company, of course.

Latterly, I have been drawn to multimedia, storytelling artists. Artists that document their own journey but in doing so have commented on the world around them. Social commentary. The artists that spring to mind are Tracey Emin, Delaine Le Bas. I also like a lot of street art; Banksy for sure, Dismaland being one of my favourite ever installations although unfortunately I never got to see it live. I did however squat the Banksy show at the GOMA with a couple of artist friends haha

Glasgow itself inspires me. The scene is buzzing at the moment with places like Yardworks supporting local street artists, too many to name. The Cobolt Collective which painted the mural at Greencity. The music scene is also quite explosive and as always that raw energy feeds into my art as well with local bands like Doss and Soapbox. i’m always looking out for new influences, the more raw the better. 

See more of Sue’s work over on Instagram. ‘Start Where You Are’ runs at Six Foot Gallery until Tuesday 11th February 2025.