SUSANNAH
BRADLEY 
Bespoke Artwork Susannah Bradley trained as an illustrator at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, which has consistently been one of the top art schools in the country for many decades. After graduation, while continuing to work as an illustrator, she became an art teacher for a while, but eventually found her dream career in publishing. Before going freelance after the birth of her children, she worked in various editorial roles at Hamlyn and IPC Magazines. Although the switch from pictures to words brought a new emphasis to her career, Susannah continued to take on special artwork commissions – and in recent years has worked on individual pieces which may be conventional pictures, or creations (sometimes three-dimensional) in wood, depicting a customer’s home, child, pet, ancestors – or even the local pub with her patron sitting outside it! Susannah’s scale of painting may vary from full wall murals (“but a mural doesn’t have to take up the whole wall – it can be a plant on a shelf or a swash-buckling pirate strutting across an otherwise blank wall” says Susannah) to tiny brooches. In between there are mirrors, letter-racks and her locally-famous cat doorstops which have caused many a real-life moggy to draw back and hiss at the intruder. Family Photographs Susannah uses the little black and white snapshots of the early part of the 20th century, with their owner’s memories of colour detail, and creates paintings in watercolour, acrylics or oils which give back the vibrancy the snapshot fails to hold. If you have an old photograph of a wedding and know what colour the bridesmaids wore, she can paint you a colourful version of it – maybe for the golden wedding present!
Susannah’s brooches may be tiny but they are instantly recognizable as her work. The Wivenhoe Mayor’s Ball brooches have become extremely collectable. Produced by Susannah as a signed and numbered limited edition with a different theme for each year’s prestigious fund-raising event, these brooches have reflected each mayor’s personal theme, which have so far included toads, dragons, British birds, and, most recently, primroses. As a devotee of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas she has made show brooches for both Wivenhoe and Ipswich Gilbert and Sullivan Societies and is now offering this service to societies everywhere. Other clubs from cycling to patchwork are now keen to have their own range of brooches, suitable for wear by men as well as women.
Letter-racks Garden plants, bowls or cricket players, local buildings, boats, family groups – beautiful desk pieces with what her customers call ‘good surprise qualities’ make Susannah’s letter-racks ideal presents for personal or commemorative presentations. Each one is individually made after careful discussion with the customer.
Square-framed mirrors make stunning decorations. You may wish to give the couple with everything a reminder of all their hobbies, or mark the selling of a family home with a mirror showing the house and the favourite areas of the garden; or maybe the producer of a show would like a thank-you mirror from the cast, with scenes and characters from the production around it. Or a mirror in the style of a room’s pre-Raphaelite theme, or visual memories from the photographs taken on a special holiday, might be what’s needed?
Murals A whole room, or a little bit of eye-catching detail here and there? It’s up to you. Susannah will discuss any project without obligation. Although she is hoping that someone will ask her to paint an English hedge on a wall somewhere, with its wild roses, songbirds flying above, and maybe a fox peeping out through cow-parsley lower down. For more mural pictures, click here
2005- Susannah paints the Wivenhoe Year for Wivenhoe Town Council - click here 2008 - Exhibition of Photographs - Books and Barley - click here |
| Susannah Bradley tel: 01206 823792 or e-mail: |
Mirrors