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- A Cup of Tea With Sue Cannon

Sue talks about her life and her art

Her Father:
“My father was remarkable for his educational progress at a young age. He was a child prodigy, four years ahead of his peers at school. At 12 he shared classes with 16 year-olds. He had his degree by the time he was 20 and his 21st birthday on the ship over to Cambridge, where he met my mother.”
“During my childhood, at home nothing we did was good enough for dad and I think we all ended up giving up at the end.
“I know now that a lot of the problems I have had through my life were partly an attempt to block out some memories of him. I was 37 before I remember he said anything encouraging to me - which was a bit late.”

Turkey:
“I Remember being disappointed that the Red Sea wasn’t red and the Black Sea wasn’t black.
“Two things that really impressed me were the high-rise caves in Cappadocia and a sultan’s palace we visited at one stage, where everything was covered in gold and diamonds and there was this amazing collection of jewel encrusted swords.

Childhood:
“My real life as a child was a fantasy life, rather romantic. In primary school in Melbourne I had already read a lot of Greek myths and legends and was addicted to a French television show ‘The King’s Outlaw’, with the lead character Thierry la Fronde.
“Thierry was always saving damsels in distress. Obviously, I thought, it was going to be a lot more fun to grow up as a man rather than a woman – but I didn’t realise at the time my options were rather limited there.
“At 8-years-old I had the first love of my own age. She was Karina, Latvian and just gorgeous, and I decided at that stage that friendship was the greatest treasure.”
“When we moved to Sydney, we lived in a house which was absurdly large, and which cost four times the value of the house we had in Melbourne, although I didn’t realise it at the time.
“My father paid-off the house in four years, so there was no money for the fripperies necessary to fit into that kind of society, such as clothes and other luxuries. We had to wear clothes that mum made.”

High School:
“I was too young when I started: the others were 12 or 13, and I felt terribly lonely. In fact I often cried myself to sleep at night that first year. That more than anything enhanced the feeling that friendship was a treasure.
“I set my sights on being part of the ‘hip’ group’ – which came from Primary school – and got a lot of practice making friends at this stage. I realised that people actually like to be listened to. This helped me eventually to make friends.
“When I was 15, to my astonishment, my parents let me go away at the end of the school certificate exams, to Huskisson (NSW South Coast resort).
“Because I was 15, wearing a virtually see-through frock and caught an enormous blue swimmer crab, our group attracted quite a deal of male attention. I fell in with an abalone diver – who was 26 - and met his parents. My mother was appalled.
“I was also good at drawing so decided to focus on art. It was something I was encouraged in at home. I would have liked to be a scientist- but that was my father’s field and if he was going to go on criticising me - I wanted something different, a field where I knew I had more expertise than him.”

Art
“I decided graphic design was the power to change society – which was why I chose to study it.
“The use of colour and abstract imagery give a poster the ability to provoke immediate emotional responses.
“Early on I became focussed on using acrylic paints – basically house paints, using the three primary colours, white and black – and also explored stencils."
“Here in the Blue Mountains, I’ve completed several commissioned works: mostly landscapes, small and large. Every year I produce a limited, numbered edition of stencilled Christmas cards or lino cuts.
“I still work mainly with acrylic ‘house’ paint – for paintings and stencil prints, but I’m also exploring pastels.

A tough life
“I first became suicidal in about 1980, at the time I decided to give up college. ‘Done in’ by years of partying, I was miserable, suffered a bout of meningitis, thankfully mild. I remember promising my friend Isabel Trundle – who, every time she got a letter from her mother, learned about someone else who had killed themselves – that she would never hear that I had killed myself.
“I began to study Tai Chi – which may have in fact saved my life. I had to find three things that made life worth living and decided they were the blue of the sky, the song of a bird and the smile of a friend.”
“When I took off on my desert trip, my partner was a mechanic. I insisted on taking the stencil equipment for the technique I was working on, and that we only travel 100km per day.
“We lived in the truck for nine months. I was in my first year of sobriety. It was mad: I Wasn’t sure that, if I got out of the car, he would come back and get me. But I got through it.
“Interestingly, when I was 25, I set a goal to defeat fear by the time I was 30, 31 at the latest. And, at 29 and a half I got sober from alcohol.
“During that next year I formed another goal that I was going to learn to love - and first I had to learn to love myself, which I did by accepting my feelings. Now I feel I can help other people learn to love themselves.”

By Peter Woods.
April, 2007