Susan Milne was born in rural Sussex and studied at St. Martin's School of Art from 1955 to 1959, graduating in book illustration. At that time, St. Martin's provided a rigorous foundation in drawing, sculpture and printmaking. After working in studios specialising in two-, and three-dimensional projects, she exhibited textile works with the Design Centre, and natural history illustrations with the Bridport Gallery. Commissioned book illustration for London publishers continued into the 1980s.
A move to the mountainous countryside of the Welsh Borders in 1981, determined the development of her studio practice. Freed from the constraints of commissioned work, and able to concentrate on the essential elements of 'place', her work gradually shifted into a new and broader context. Extending the boundaries of drawing, and paying greater attention to the substance and materiality of what is beneath our feet, she has made work that emphasises the indivisibility of the relationship between land and human existence. Selected exhibitions and commissions: The Welsh Landscape, Oriel 31, 1988; Trees in the Landscape, solo exhibition, Somerset Rural Life Museum, 1988; Federation of British Artists, Mall Gallery, 1990, 1991; Images of Rural Wales, Palace of Westminster, 1991; S4C Invited Artists, prizewinner, Cardiff 1992; Susan Milne Retrospective, Rye Gallery, 1995; Black Mountains Drawings, solo touring exhibition, Brecknock Museum and Ceri Richards Gallery, Swansea, 1994; Nature in Art, Gloucester, 1994/95; Landscape and Art, Cowcross Gallery, London, 1999; Marking Time, solo exhibition, Brecknock Museum, 2000; Women of Imagination, Bleddfa Gallery, 2000; MOMA Purchase Exhibition, Contemporary Art for Wales, 2011; Land & Memory, residency and exhibition, Monnow Valley Arts, 2012; Poems for R.S. (illustrations), Hay Festival Press, 2013; Sound Walk, spoken word contribution, BBC Radio 3, 2017; Printmakers, Sidney Nolan Trust, 2015; Fragments, Oxmarket Gallery, Chichester, 2018; Works on Paper and Assemblages, Drawing Room Gallery, Hay-on-Wye, 2018; The High Country, illustrations to poems by Mark Harrell, 2020; There is Always a Mountain, solo exhibition, Tower Gallery, 2021; Climate Change, Mid-Wales Arts Centre, 2021; Eirian Llwyd Memorial Award, Ruthin Craft Centre, 2022. Collaborative projects and installation: Co-founder of The Space Project, a multi-disciplinary organisation, 1997-2000. Commissions included: Senses of Place, for the London Millennium Festival, Waterloo and South Bank, 2000; Young Vic Theatre, arts workshops, 1997; British Festival of Visual Theatre, workshops, 1998; The Night Watchman, for Central School of Speech and Drama, Oval Cricket Ground, 1999; Creative Spaces, The Architecture Foundation, 1999; Corridor, Installation for the University of Greenwich, 1999; Seminar Presentation, Institute Romkunst, Oslo, 2000; The Glasshouse Project, Sainsbury Trust, 2000; The Cutters, installation, About Face Theatre Company, 2004; Printmaking in the Landscape, Ikon Gallery/Sidney Nolan Trust, 2017; Skeletons of the Land, with James Goff, Black Mountains College, 2019. Educational posts: Senior lecturer in Drawing and Visual Studies, University of Greenwich, faculties of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, 1985-1991. Course development, teaching and serving on examination boards at several institutions in the adult education and tertiary sectors, including: Hereford College of Arts; University of Wales, Swansea; Larenstein IAC, Netherlands - faculty of Landscape Design, 1990-93. Awards & memberships: Arts Council Travel Award, to research land and culture of Friesland, 1994; Arts Council Bursary, 1995; Eirian Llwyd Printmaking Award - to research the use of soils in printmaking, 2019; member: Royal Society of Arts, elected 1997; Architecture Foundation, 2000; Engage Cymru, committee member, 2005. Public Collections/Acquisitions: The Woodland Trust; Development Board for Rural Wales; Contemporary Arts Society for Wales; National Library of Wales; National Trust; Brecknock Museum Trust. ________________________ Photographs on this site: Marsha Arnold, Lisa Payne, Susan Milne, Michael Bowers |