Suellen Saidee Cook
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” Rumi
My parents named me after Scarlet O’Hara’s sister in Gone with the Wind, Suellen O’Hara.
My father was born of Welsh parents. My mother is a Queenslander.
If there is a person in my artworks it’s usually my daughter Lucy. I love Lucy, I always have and always will, no matter what. I am so proud of her.
I love cats, my dear friends, and the family who live next door, Photoshop, photography, merlot, oysters Kilpatrick, magnolias, daphne and freesias, wild weather, Tasmania and Maine, lighthouses, sailing, camping and my partner Glenn.
I am a photographer of the imagination and the impossible.
Making art feeds my soul.
If I’m not creating I become restless and frustrated.
I like to tell stories through images that spill out randomly from deep within my imagination.
I make pictures about things rather than take pictures of things…
The images consist of a process of weaving together lots of different things, places and objects, until they sit comfortably with each other, and tell their story of why they are together, like an old married couple silently reading in front of the winter fire on a Sunday evening. You can sense the comfortableness and familiarity and at the same time be suspicious of the existence of a certain tension.
My artworks, I feel, seem to dwell in another dimension …
“Step inside a Suellen Saidee Cook image, and all at once see beauty and whimsy, sense the familiar and then out of the corner of your eye become intensely aware of the unfamiliar, the puzzle of almost impossible situations that are strangely believable.
Step through the glass and be surrounded by a reality re-invented that ignites your imagination. Look for the answers to the unspoken questions.“
Can you step out again, back to your previous life and not be drawn back in or changed even just a little?
Now to the serious stuff
I am a Master Photographer of the Australian Institute of Professional Photographers (AIPP) I have been named the Tasmanian Professional Photographer of the Year in 2015 , Tasmanian Professional Illustrative Photographer of the Year in 2015 and 2019, and the 2018 AIPP Australian Professional Illustrative Photographer of the Year. My photography has been awarded not only with numerous AIPP awards at both State and National levels, but many other prestigious photography awards around the world.
“I have dabbled in art most of my life; my mother was an accomplished painter and my father a talented musical instrument maker. I spent time at Art School exploring photographic expression and graphic design but I chose to spend a decade or more completing a PhD in marine biology and working as a research scientist and environmental consultant. However, something was missing; the opportunity to express myself, my imagination. After a marine science voyage to the Southern Ocean my interest in photography was reignited.
Since late in 2011 I have been passionate about making art using only my own photographs. A finished artwork consist of many individual photographs woven together in sometimes hundreds of layers to give life to the final image.
I absolutely love what I do, I am passionate about it and I’m fortunate to be able pursue this path.
