Suzi Cooper

I’m an Ayrshire artist working with paint and felt to create colourful visual narratives that explore contemporary social and political issues through humour, familiarity, and storytelling. My practice combines abstract painted acrylic backgrounds with constructed felt elements, creating layered compositions that balance softness with tension, playfulness with unease.
Rooted in childhood memories, British popular culture, and everyday observation, my work draws on the visual language of theatre, puppetry, television, and simplified forms to encourage immediate connection with the viewer. I’m interested in how familiar imagery and humour can act as an entry point into more difficult conversations around power, trust, governance, and collective social experience.
Using felt as both a tactile and symbolic material, I explore the contrast between comfort and discomfort. Often associated with childhood, softness, and play, felt allows me to create work that initially appears approachable or light-hearted before revealing more complex emotional and political undercurrents beneath the surface. I use humour not to diminish seriousness, but to sharpen it.
In a cultural landscape that can often feel increasingly heavy, distant, and visually restrained, I want my work to retain a sense of colour, theatricality, and human connection. Through layered imagery, exaggerated characters, and staged environments, I aim to create spaces that invite reflection while remaining visually engaging and accessible.
My influences include Thomas Grünfeld, W. W. Denslow, and Kara Walker, whose approaches to storytelling, symbolism, and simplified visual language continue to inform my own practice.