Born 1928, Melbourne

'I don't envy anyone with a full life. Some people have to keep up with the Jones's but I've never been like that. Being satisfied with your lot I suppose isn't it? I get what people who go to parties and have a full life from painting. It's the cheapest way I know of satisfying one's desire for pleasure. I get pleasure from the finished work. I look at it and I think: "Did I really do that?'

- Renee Sutton, Artist's statement, March 2006

Renee Sutton has been making art for over 50 years. However, although she took part in art classes as part of her schooling in the 1940s, she initially undertook no formal training. From 1951 to 1952, Sutton completed her general nursing and midwifery training in Melbourne after which she worked as a nurse in charge of the children's ward at Mildura Base Hospital. She then travelled overseas, working as a nurse in a tuberculosis clinic in Leysin, Switzerland. In 1954, whilst living and working in London, Sutton explains that she had "overworked", and was admitted to Bethlem Royal Hospital where she was treated for twelve months. After her stay in hospital she travelled with her family throughout Scandinavia and, upon returning to Melbourne, resumed work as a private nurse in 1957. In 1958, she was admitted to Larundel Psychiatric Hospital where she was treated for a lengthy period of two years. It was here, as part of an occupational therapy program, that Sutton first began to paint on a regular basis.

In these programs devised by Dr. Eric Cunningham Dax, patients were provided with standardised art materials and were encouraged to draw and paint without instructions. This approach was intended to lead to the production of spontaneous, unmediated expressions of the inner lives of people who might otherwise have difficulty in verbally communicating their experiences. As such, these works, which Dax labelled "psychiatric art", were seen to be useful aids in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. However, one of the difficulties of this clinical approach is that, as these works were treated as part of a patient's clinical record, the creator of the work was not able to keep their creative works. Furthermore, when Dax later began to exhibit these works for the purposes of education, the private meanings and intentions of the individuals who made them were often not represented.

Thus, in listening to Sutton talk about the works she painted in hospital, a new dimension of her artworks emerges. As she explains: "There's pictures I tried to paint in Larundel from experience and what I remembered of situations and the scenery surrounding them." [1] In this way, the artist's intention to represent scenes from her childhood, places she had visited, or concerts and exhibitions she had attended redresses the previous singular reading of these works as spontaneous and direct expressions of her innermost thoughts. For Sutton, her artworks have also given her insight into her condition: "It has not only been therapy, but it's helped me solve and realise problems and things I didn't realise when I was younger." [2] As she recently revealed, her painting of the girl holding a pair of red shoes (see cover) depicts the character in Hans Christian Anderson's The Red Shoes in which a young girl is driven to the brink by a pair of red shoes which take over of her life by constantly compelling her to dance. As the artist explains, the red shoes represent her illness.

In more recent years Sutton has continued to paint and has participated in numerous art classes. She is currently a member of Artbeat in Sandy Beach Centre, Melbourne, a practical and educational program for people to get together and explore and share ideas about art.

[1] Quoted in Collected Thoughts:Renee Sutton , 2006

[2] Quoted in Collected Thoughts:Renee Sutton , 2006