People

“My name is Susan Lucine, I am an artist living and working in Liverpool.  I don’t eat crisps, I don’t eat chocolate, I don’t drink fizzy drinks and I’ve never watched Big Brother or Strictly Come Dancing- that’s about the measure of me I suppose.

“Painting is my life, it’s what drives me and this is what I love. My family comes first but painting is a close second. I think it’s very invigorating, satisfying and comforting.  It’s a lot of things, doing a painting is a lot of things and I think just the creative element is so important, not just for the artist, but for the society in which the artist lives.  Every civilisation is measured by its art work.

“I draw my inspiration from people and colour. Something will just catch your eye.  I’ve just painted an onion and it’s just the shininess of the skin which caught my eye.  If I’ve got a model in front of me, it’s always a part of the model that draws my eye.  It’s very difficult to put it into words because it’s a visual experience. I think a painting has a visual language of its own and any words you say about a painting are at best a translation."

Becoming a prolific and successful artist is a tortured journey for many, but for Sue it has been particularly difficult.  Before being diagnosed with and treated for paranoid schizophrenia her life was an emotional desert.

“I was twenty years in the wilderness and doing absolutely nothing for about fifteen.  No emotional development, no spiritual development and certainly no financial development, so that has shaped a lot of things.  I just remember visiting people and picking wild flowers.  For years on end and that’s all I did.  I went round visiting people and as I was going round visiting them I’d be picking bunches of wild flowers from the way side.  

Self Portrait Sue Lucine

“This was my life, for years.   I didn’t do anything.  Nothing.  I was ill.  It was a period in my life that I wish had never happened.  It has blighted my life and it has certainly blighted my love life.  But now I am doing the best work I have ever done. I take it from here and I take it from there and I go from the here and now.  Not from what was in the past. 

“You can’t change the past and I think it’s one of the lessons I learnt young in life, is to accept the things you just can’t change, if there are things you can’t change they are out of your control.  I don’t dwell.”

On February 21st, 1995 Sue arrived at a police station on the Isle of Man, dishevelled, barefoot and bloodstained. She told the police she had injured her children.  When they arrived at her house they found that Sue had attacked her two young daughters. Four-year-old Clara was pronounced dead at the hospital and the older girl, (7 years old), survived after emergency surgery.

“I remember it all.  There are only very little, little pieces I don’t remember.  But it was a dreadful time.  It was a dreadful black, black day.”

That dreadful black day was the culmination of years of difficulties.

A nude by Sue Lucine

“It was an awful time.  I was treated like a wild animal, I really was.  I was locked up in a strip cell.  You should only be in a strip cell for 10 minutes.  I was there days, locked up.  I think once you lock a soul up, that soul is changed forever.   There are some parts of that person that will never recover, will never forget certainly. 

“The general feeling of hammering on a door wanting out and not being heard, I think is a dreadful thing to do to any human.  Bad enough to do it to an animal but to do it to a human, I think is awful.  I just accept that I had those years that were no development, no emotional development, anything.  Nothing went on. 

An independent report into the incident said before the attack Sue was experiencing hallucinations, delusions and disturbed thoughts.  It was a dangerous situation for her and the children but the right sort of help was not forthcoming.

The mental health services on the Isle of Man at the time were not up to the task of dealing with a patient with a severe mental illness. The report states that Sue didn’t slip through the net: there was no net.  She was later charged with manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

“It happened and you can’t undo what happened.  You’ve just got to live with it, forgive yourself somehow and move on.  You have to, you have to.  Clara died and it’s taken me fourteen years to come to the point where I can look at photographs of her without tears.  It does take time.

“It’s the first Christmas without her, the first birthday without her.  You put it to the back of your mind and it keeps coming back.  Some of it’s painful and some of it’s not. I also have some lovely, lovely memories of Clara.  I have a photograph here of her on a swing, a moment caught in time smiling and it just makes me smile.”

After being sentenced without a limit of time, Sue was taken to a secure clinic facility in the North of England which specialised in the treatment of offenders with a mental illness.  It was here that Sue finally got the treatment she needed.

“I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. When I was first given the right drugs I felt like I could live again.  It felt like someone had taken a huge burden from my shoulders and I could suddenly be myself. 

A nude by Sue Lucine

“It was a revelation which has changed my life.  I had a wonderful psychiatrist called Dr. Jim Higgins OBE.  He is a wonderful man who knew he could help me.  I didn’t like him at first but I grew to love him.  It is true; you do fall in love with your psychiatrist.  With a great deal of help I have come to some sort of fruition in my life and work which is a lovely feeling.  It drives you on to do more and more.  The more you achieve, the more you want to achieve."

With the past firmly behind her and a bright future ahead Sue is hoping her painting will take her to places she has always longed to see.

“I would love to exhibit in New York. I have been invited by a gallery in Chelsea and now I just have to raise the money to get there. I also have a dream to exhibit in Moscow and Japan. 

“To see how my work is received by people who don’t speak English.  Now that would be a tremendous thing to do! There are things I am doing now which I should have been doing in my thirties. I’m not playing catch up or anything; I know I am not thirty but there’s stuff going on in my life which should have happened years ago.”

Sue's exhibition runs until June 20 at the MeMe Gallery in Liverpool.