Sue Dewhurst Cardiganshire, United Kingdom
Sue Dewhurst is a narrative painter whose work explores ordinary lives, overlooked people and changing communities through humour, social observation and nostalgia. Drawing on Northern working-class roots and her life in rural West Wales, she combines character, place and storytelling to examine memory, belonging and the social histories hidden in the everyday.
My practice is rooted in social observation, storytelling and an enduring fascination with ordinary lives. I paint people and places that can easily be overlooked: older women, working people, rural communities, agricultural buildings and the everyday rituals through which lives and identities are revealed.
Humour is central to much of my figurative work. I combine affectionate observation with irreverence and pathos, using character, titles and narrative to explore ageing, class, gender, memory and belonging. I am particularly interested in people who are rarely presented as protagonists, giving them presence, wit and agency.
My rural paintings explore a parallel story: landscapes, farm buildings and ways of life undergoing change. I am interested not simply in their visual appearance, but in what these places hold — labour, family histories, economic change and the marks left by generations of use.
My approach has been shaped by more than thirty years working across art, curation and socially engaged practice. This has included community arts, artist residencies, Arts Council England-funded pop-up gallery projects and work with people and communities whose experiences are often overlooked. These encounters have profoundly informed what I notice, what I value and what I choose to paint.
Across my practice, painting becomes a form of social record: preserving the humour, resilience, contradictions and quiet significance of people and places that might otherwise disappear without ceremony.
Artwork
Harry - Installation piece - Relic Boxes, Mixed-media assemblage incorporating found objects, ephemera and painted elements, 2026, £345
The Hikers c.1970 Social Lives Series, Acrylic on boxed canvas, 2026, £425
Doreen - Owd Lasses Series, Framed Acrylic on boxed canvas with caption tag - comes with written fictitious back story, 2022, £575
Ronnie - The Flat Series, Acrylic on Boxed Canvas, 2026, £425
Bald Heads and Bulls - Rural Lives Collection, Acrylic on Boxed Canvas, framed in a grey, wooden shadow frame, 2025, £815
Ready for Renovation or Demolition - Aren't We All Darling?, Acrylic on boxed canvas, 2026, £750
Alice - Ghost Town, Acrylic on boxed canvas, 2026, £3250
Projects and exhibitions
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From the Outside Looking In27/06/2026 — 30/07/2026 From the Outside Looking In was a solo exhibition at Oriel Cardi Bach, West Wales, in 2026, bringing together my narrative paintings with mixed-media Relic Boxes and installation elements. The exhibition explored overlooked lives, ageing, memory and social history through ordinary characters and the traces they leave behind. Paintings were... [Read more] |
Oriel Cardi Bach, Cardigan, Ceredigion | Details |