Susan O’Doherty is a painter who, at the time of writing, was living and working in Sydney, Australia. Born Susan Wilson in April 1960 to Maureen Parkes and Royce Wilson, she is the third eldest of four siblings. As a child her father, an army major, was often absent and she witnessed first hand her mother’s experiences with domestic isolation as sole carer of the children.
Upon leaving school she studied make-up and prosthetics at the Three Arts Makeup Centre, Chippendale, between 1980-82. In 1986 she travelled to Europe and the UK where she met art conservators John Bull and Julia Sharp and was able to visit many different art galleries. It was while she was in London that she met an old acquaintance, the Australian rock musician Peter O’Doherty (of Mental As Anything), who was later to also take up painting as a profession. Susan married Peter in 1988, changing her name to Susan O’Doherty. With two young sons, Declan (b.1988) and Otis (b.1990) and a partner frequently away on tour, O’Doherty embraced the creative outlet of painting in an effort to avoid a destructive sense of loneliness she felt she had observed as a child.
A self-trained artist, O’Doherty started painting in 1992, often making use of objects close to hand for inspiration and confidently moving from representation to abstraction. Informed by her instinct and intuition, she remains grateful that she did not go to art school in order to “learn everything in a box”. Originally working with small paper compositions but moving on to larger scale works exploring tone, texture and spatial depth, O’Doherty’s subject matter has been described by Elizabeth Butel as “interior landscapes”. Most of her images have no perspective, horizon or shadow, but suggest an internal world shown through a rough and layered surface covered in a restricted palette of four earthy hues.
O’Doherty’s home is her studio, a very creative environment with every paint splattered room testifying to the abundant creativity of all family members. Indeed this setting is conducive for O’Doherty to work alongside her husband, both enjoying the exchange of advice as they work.
Since 1997 O’Doherty has exhibited in galleries in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth and New Zealand, and has been selected for various art prizes, including the Redlands Westpac Art Prize, Mosman Art Prize, Norvill Art Prize and the Cadry’s Art Prize. Her work was included on a cover of Australian Art Review and her studio home has featured in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph.
Susan worked throughout 2007-08 on her most significant exhibition, ’900 Eyes, Domestic Lives’, which opened first at the Manly Art Gallery in Sydney before touring to Tweed River Regional Art Gallery and Maitland Regional Art Gallery. The project is in two parts; the ’900 Eyes’ portion is comprised of 450 portraits of different people in Sydney’s art world – curators, artshop workers, gallery directors, journalists and artists – whose varying ages and experiences are brought together into a richly composite portrait. The 'Domestic Lives’ part of the exhibition features large abstract paintings of abstracted domestic objects and smaller mixed media works featuring dolls performing menial household tasks. Together they comment on the apprehension many women face from the pressures of domesticity.
