Sussy Cazalet’s tapestries know how to hold a room. Based between Norfolk and London, she came to weaving by way of theatre, interiors and furniture design, and this breadth is relayed strongly in her work. Her art carries both a painterly sensibility and the spatial intelligence of design, translating colour, composition and atmosphere into tactile woven form.
Cazalet’s practice has been shaped by a wide visual world. The artist speaks of early time spent in California looking at mid-century modernist designers and American abstract painters, then of later journeys to Brazil and Japan, where stone gardens and modernist interiors sharpened her eye further. Above all, however, nature is the force that returns most insistently. “A vast majority of my inspiration is attributed to the omnipresent power of nature, the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees,” she says. “These are my constant guiding force, working in tandem with my inner dialogue.”
Over the past four years, Cazalet’s deepening commitment to weaving has taken her across India, Africa and the Middle East, seeking out master weavers able to translate her painterly language into fibre. Working closely with them, she has developed hand-mixed dyes and a bespoke technique that preserves the delicacy of her studies while giving the finished works a unique added weight.
Her champion is Tristan Hoare, founder of the eponymous London gallery. Hoare has had a close view of the artist’s evolution. “Sussy Cazalet is a remarkable creative talent,” he tells The Wick. What he finds especially compelling is the way her tapestries turn feeling into form. In Ascendance, her recent exhibition at his gallery, he sees “a distinctive and fresh voice to contemporary textile”, shaped by a process that is “both structured and intuitive, balancing control with a quiet sense of freedom.” He also points to the sense of landscape within Cazalet’s work, “internal and atmospheric rather than literal”.
