Susan Wicks Livres

Set in a picturesque village in south-west France, the narrative weaves together the lives of diverse characters facing personal struggles. Alex escapes a troubled past in England, while Julien grapples with solitude and sleepless nights. Pete, seemingly content with a loving wife and a comfortable life, harbors deep fears. Magali yearns for a life beyond her parents' limitations, and Damien expresses his frustration with the world around him. Their interconnected stories reveal the complexities of love, ambition, and the search for fulfillment.

A giant crane appears at the back windows of a residential street, its red 'eye' overlooking lives on the other side of the glass where Susan Wicks writes searchingly about our ordinary existence, its serendipities and unreliable sense-impressions. By the time the crane leaves, the landscape we knew will have changed and we too will have moved on.

Lace is the result of a collaboration between poet Susan Wicks and artist Elizabeth Clayman. The 13 images here are from a series of charcoal drawings on gessoed wood panels and are a response to a collection of antique lace housed within the 'hidden' collections in the Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery store-rooms, opened up as part of the museum's project. The meditation of Wick's poem is an imaginative journey directly provoked by the frayed shapes and often defective patterns of the lace itself, as translated by Clayman's drawings. At its centre is a 'she' at times the imagined maker of the original fabric, at times the artist, and at times simply a woman looking out at a strange world through the complex grey curtain the lace provides. The poem invites a study of, and eventual escape from, depression, but also reads as a study of the creative process itself, and the restraints female creators, particularly, have traditionally suffered from and overcome.