Sue Shields is a mixed-media landscape artist based in Dunbar, East Lothian. Her practice brings together printmaking, painting, and drawing to explore the relationship between place, memory, and form.
Working primarily with monotype, Sue values the technique for its spontaneity and expressive potential, a way of simplifying detail towards abstraction while retaining a strong sense of atmosphere. These prints often become the foundation for larger mixed-media works, allowing her to extend and reinterpret visual ideas across materials.
Her process is rooted in direct experience of the landscape. Sue visits locations repeatedly, walking, sketching, and mapping to build familiarity with their sculptural forms and layered histories. The resulting works combine elements from multiple places, both real and imagined, to create a kind of visual chronicle, what she describes as a contemporary saga or coronach. Her focus on “beauty through environmental adversity” reflects an ongoing dialogue between fragility, resilience, and renewal within the natural world.
Originally from Cambridgeshire, Sue relocated to Dunbar, where she now works from her own studio. A member of Edinburgh Printmakers, she has exhibited widely across the UK and undertaken numerous residencies supported by Arts Council England, including projects with Metal Culture, the Hay Festival, and Cambridge University’s John Clare Cottage Trust.
Sue studied at the University of Brighton (Printmaking Diploma with Distinction), the Manchester School of Art, and Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.
