Suzy Babington Returns To Scarborough For A New Show

Suzy Babington returns to Scarborough for a new show at the Three Works Gallery.

The titles of her paintings are too unwieldy to use in text, so I have given them numbers:
1. Start
2. Level: do what makes you happy
3. Mode: will you die trying to ascertain what you desire?

As you step in front of her work, the immediate impression is one of exuberant colour. Two paintings feature female subjects while the third focuses on a Catherine wheel of tones against an Op Art background.
Directly facing you, on entry to the gallery, is a green nude (2). The cones placed strategically on her body reference one of Madonna’s more controversial costumes, but this is only a nod in the direction of the pop star. What is most striking is the green of the body and the shimmering highlights along the leg.

Above the supine model (is this Babington herself?) the sky features two cats in the shape of clouds. The clouds are skilfully painted so the cats are not immediately apparent, but discerning the shapes requires only minimal effort. This seems to be an assertion of what is important to the artist at the moment of putting a brush to canvas.

The other figurative piece (3) features a blue woman. This time we are head on, as opposed to the green woman who is in profile. She puts her tongue out at us. As we look down the canvas, she morphs into what I took at first to be an egg cup. The person standing next me favoured an hourglass and we speculated as to whether this might be a comment on women in society.

In conversation, Suzy Babington denied this. She asserted that she does nothing to promote any political agendas. We are left with the shapes and the colours in front of us.

If the blue and green woman paintings have a suggestion of surrealism, then the last (1) could be seen as an homage to Op Art – Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, etc.

The conflicting swirls and discordant colours are there, but at the centre of the piece is a spiralling anomaly that offsets the visual effect of the apparent movement of the parallel lines. Is the spiral taking us down into the earth, perhaps even with an ammonite at its core, or is it a figure thrusting towards us? The eye can only deal with one of those views at a time.

There are times when anyone interpreting a painting can get carried away. If it is an ammonite at the core of 2, does that link with the layers of rock the green lady is resting on that has some ‘fossilised’ symbols in its third level? I think it is at this point that common sense says “enough, dealing with surface layers is quite sufficient”.

Suzy Babington’s challenge is to wrest meaning from riddles. She gives us clues (the singular titles not withstanding) but something of the enigma remains.