Susan Trimble is an emerging ceramic artist living and working on Turrbal and Yuggera Country in Brisbane, Queensland.
Born in South Africa, Susan immigrated to Australia as a teenager. Although she dreamed of becoming a professional artist, she completed a Diploma of Graphic Design and spent 30 years enjoying the creative freedoms and opportunities that career offered.
Susan always imagined painting would be the path to becoming an artist and practiced in her spare time. In 2002, she undertook a three-month residency at Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy. Later, she entered the Archibald Prize in 2019 and was selected for the Salon des Refusés of the Brisbane Portrait Prize that same year.
Everything changed after a chance encounter with clay in 2020. Following a masterclass in large-scale ceramics and mosaic installation, Susan was offered the opportunity to learn from the renowned ceramic and mosaic artist Jane du Rand. Over three years, she learned skills in ceramic and mosaicing techniques, kiln and studio management and gained experience on a major public art commission while assisting in workshops. This period nurtured her love of – and cemented her commitment to – the ceramic medium.
Today, Susan works from her home studio in Brisbane, blending her design background, love of painting and nature with expressive mark-making to create works that are an inquiry into joy and connection. Her practice reflects a dedication to craftsmanship and a belief in the transformative power of art.
Susan’s solo exhibition Birds of a Feather was held in 2024. She was a finalist in the biennial North Queensland Ceramic Award that same year and again this year in 2026. Susan is a regular exhibitor at Artisans in the Gardens in Sydney. Earlier this year, Susan was a finalist in Studio on Brunswick’s Independent Visual Art Prize and won the Accelerator Award which includes mentoring and will culminate in a pop-up solo show in 2027.
Susan is currently working on a range of new totems for this year’s Artisans in the Gardens in Sydney’s Botanic Garden in October 2026.
MY PRACTICE
I am a sculptural ceramic artist working on Turrbal and Juggera Country in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
At its core, my practice is the interface between my internal and external worlds. It enables me to process my environment, my emotions and my ideas. It draws on my connection to the natural world and is a personal reflection of how being in nature restores my inner balance.
I find working with clay grounding, meditative and profoundly healing. My work reflects the joy I find in the tactile experience of clay and that joy and sense of playfulness transfers to others through my finished pieces. It explores the layered relationships that shape us as individuals and link us to one another within a broader community.
As someone from elsewhere else, native flora and fauna offer the South African in me a uniquely Australian way to connect to my now home. I explore design, colour and pattern through flowers and foliage and use native Australian birds to bring implied movement, song and often a human narrative.
My sculptures reflect the fusion of my graphic design background, my love of painting and infinite possibilities of the ceramic process.
MY WORK
I create sculptural vessels and totem poles. My vessels explore themes of connection through the rhythms of change – domestic life, friendship, nostalgia and the interplay of absence and return. I draw inspiration from shifting seasons and the ebb and flow of life, weaving threads that mark people, places and past experiences.
They offer a space to playfully explore the relationship between form and surface. I incorporate leather cord, thread, grass and mosaics, to add layers of texture and meaning. Each piece is hand-built, layered with slip, colour and texture across varied clay bodies, and finished with glazes, underglazes, stains and oxides.
My totem sculptures are different. They are bold and designed to make an expressive statement. Each conical form, crowned with a single totem, stands as a quiet yet powerful sentinel among foliage in courtyards and balcony gardens. I enjoy the freedom these simple forms offer – space to paint, carve and layer marks that together build depth and texture, creating imagery that invites contemplation.
Whether through surface design or sculptural form, I embrace the flexibility of moving between two and three dimensional art, keeping my practice dynamic and ever-evolving.
