Author: Suzanne Conboy-Hill

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Art and politics

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

There’s no credit for this image on the Facebook page so I’ve clipped the whole post and added a link. I find this profoundly moving, skilful, and so simply, alarmingly, graphically on point. Science fiction has produced numerous stories of the environmental apocalypse of our own making [unfortunately I can’t put my finger on one for now] but this sculpture is the best illustration I’ve seen. I like art to have meaning, which is not to say I need it always to make political points or to be in-your-face emotional wrecking balls, just to say something that prompts a bit … Continue reading Art and politics

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Cow

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

This large lady with the world-weary expression is an enhanced version of the one in Not Being First Fish where she illustrates a story about townies not shutting gates because why should they, huh? She may be appearing in a shop near you*, well near me anyway, in the new year. There’ll be a copy of the book too, for perusal, and copies for sale over the road in Steyning Book Shop, bless ’em. *The Basement93, Steyning High street. You’ll find them on Facebook, and also Instagram where the whole shop-full of loveliness is presented in pictures. Continue reading Cow

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The Wild Rose and the China Doll

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

I was messing around with charcoal yesterday and made some sweeps across an A2 sheet of cartridge. Another couple of sweeps and I saw what it was – a scene from a story I wrote some while ago which had been triggered by that extraordinary track by Nick Cage and Kylie Minogue – Where the Wild Roses Grow. I’d heard that track just a day or so ago. The story is called The Wild Rose and the China Doll and you can find it here on Full of Crow.     Continue reading The Wild Rose and the China Doll

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Dancing Her Black Bones Home

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

This is from one of my own, as yet unpublished, stories (it nearly made it, nearly earned its keep, but the journal folded before publication so Rats!). It’s called Black Bones after the story’s title, Dancing her Black Bones Home, which is about a young deaf woman who is treated as stupid by her small community and eventually finds herself on a pebbly beach trying to work out her place in the world and her relationship with the religion she’s grown up with.   Acrylics on 8×10 canvas board with a cut out figure in silhouette at the bottom. That … Continue reading Dancing Her Black Bones Home

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Eight Stranded Whales

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Not long after surprising myself with the painting drawn from Oonah Joslin’s poem, I was struck by a whole bunch of images coming from a poem by Marianne Moore that I heard on Radio Four’s Poetry Please (I’m laughing at myself here because goodness knows how I stumbled over that – I’m a proper BBC6Music kinda girl! It is Roger McGough though). It’s called The Steeple-Jack and I was reeled in and landed by the first verse: Dürer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this, with eight stranded whales to look at; with the sweet … Continue reading Eight Stranded Whales

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Crazy Diamond

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

 Crazy Diamond. I’m not a good reader of poetry, I do far better if I hear it read, but this one – From Crazy Diamond to Borrowed Light by Oonah Joslin – made me think because of her comment about how it came about. She tells me it was something her mentor said when she was struggling to believe in herself as a poet; he told her that diamonds don’t shine on their own, they borrow light from those who do. Turning the Pink Floyd reference on its head, the imagery that came from this, finding your own light instead of reflecting that … Continue reading Crazy Diamond