Susie Hamilton, Underground at Paul Stolper Gallery, London WC1 – October 2025 – Off on the train from Hackney again, East London to West End although mostly on the Lizzy line rather than the actual underground. The Elizabeth Line is fast, way too fast when it comes to drawing, them beautifully slow old tube trains are far better when it comes to drawing people, sneaking out a ever present sketchbook while your subject is lost in a book or more likely these days a phone. How many stops have you got them for? No don’t get off yet!  I like Susie Hamilton’s style, the way she paints, the energy of her work, the marks that pull her pieces together, I was particularly keen to see these pieces birthed from drawings on London’s tube trains, a practice that interests me immensely…    

“Paul Stolper is pleased to announce Underground, an exhibition and a striking new publication by Hurtwood featuring nearly ninety recent works by acclaimed London-based painter Susie Hamilton. Created between 2023 – 2025, first on the London Underground and developed later in the studio, these pen and pencil drawings on paper, and subsequent paintings on cardboard and torn canvas, portray passengers caught in states of transformation. The work links the everyday space of the Tube with the mythological and literary underworld, often imagined as a place of metamorphosis”

The clocks have gone back, London is dark before five now (save for the modern hell-lights of cars and bikes), we’re heading from Tottenham Court Road to the Paul Stopler Gallery’s Museum Street home, the evening isn’t pleasant, it hasn’t put people off, the space is already busy, the plan to get there before the crowds has failed, it is a case of ducking around people to see the art. Actually, this crowd aren’t the cooler-than-you art student types who just like to stand in the way of the art talking to each other, people are looking at the art in here and if there are conversations it is mostly about what’s on the wall. Here’s another #43SecondFilm…  

I kind of thought I knew what to expect in terms of Susie Hamilton’s Underground drawings and paintings, I kind of expected sketchbook size intensity, her washes of brushwork, I got far more than that though. These big pieces are exciting, the immediacy of the drawing and painting on scrap cardboard, the mark making on pieces of canvas, it feels like she taken the urgency and the no time to really think about it you have to have when drawing on the tube or on a short bus ride and retained all that spontaneous decision making in her studio when taking these peices further. These big paintings look exciting together in here on the gallery wall, I like that most of the work hasn’t been tamed by a frame, that the cardboard is as feral as the marks on them and yes the play on underground from tube trains to the literary underworld. 

I expected to like this show, I wasn’t really expecting to be as excited by it as I am, I thought I knew Susie Hamilton as an artist, but there’s something more here than we’ve seen before, this is a little more than just another Susie Hamilton exhibition, something more than just another collection of her always reward work, just something more. (sw)   

Paul Stolper Gallery is at 31 Museum Street, London, WC1A 1LH The show continues until Saturday November 1st

The book / The art via Paul Stolper Gallery / Susie Hamilton on Instagram

previously –

ORGAN PREVIEW: ‘Art transforms things and it can transform misery and apathy into delight and activity’. Artist Susie Hamilton has an exhibition and book launch this October at London’s Paul Stolper Gallery…

13 QUESTIONS FROM ORGAN: Ahead of the 2023 Art Car Boot Fair, painter Susie Hamilton takes on those Thirteen Questions…

ORGAN: Electric Art Car Boot Fair countdown, painter Susie Hamilton’s solo exhibition ‘Unbound’ opens at London’s Paul Stolper Gallery this Friday, with a Private View on Thursday evening…

As always, do please click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show…