Local Face: Sue Gosney

This Autumn has been a real treat for Sue Gosney. She always prepares for the Chilterns Art Exhibition where she has been displaying her paintings for the last 10 years. It was just as well this year because her husband Eddie swept her off to Seville in early October to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. They were treated to High Mass in Seville Cathedral on the day, with a choir singing and incense even though it was the middle of the week and not a special feast day.

Sue and Eddie Gosney came to live in Wendover in 1982. When their twins, Helen and Laura were six months old. It had been traumatic enough to be a first time mother with twins in the first place but moving to somewhere completely new was rather daunting for Sue. She was astonished to be addressed by name when she first walked out of her new front door. So this was village life! It was a disconcerting experience-everybody seemed to be coming up to speak to her and knew about her already.
Sue was already a member of TAMBA, the twins and multiple birth association and her credentials had moved ahead of her. At the time, Clare Owen was chair of TAMBA and Sue was soon roped in to help with the administration of that vital support group. When she ventured out with her enormous pram, she always looked out for other mothers with prams-they did still exist. Hence she met Penny Swindlehurst. That week- end, Sue had enrolled on a First Aid course at Wendover St John Ambulance hut and Penny’s husband, Peter was running the course. She was courageous enough to venture to the Monday afternoon Toddler Club in Wendover Memorial Hall and met some more families who have been firm friends ever since.

She has thoroughly enjoyed the Chilterns countryside and often took her twins walking up Coombe Hill or in Wendover Woods with their younger sister Josephine in a carrier Sue’s father had been an Archers addict, since she was a child but she had never expected to be living in a community which reflected some aspects of the long running radio soap opera! She did receive an invitation to Nigel and Elizabeth’s wedding and has offered to exhibit her paintings in the Lower Loxley Gallery but Julia couldn’t cope, especially as Elizabeth had twins, too!

Sue had studied Art at “0” and “A”-level and had wanted to go to Art School but her mother persuaded her that Business College would be more sensible so she accepted and started to work in the travel business, going to night classes for Art in Camden and at the City Literary Institute. She completed five years of an Open University degree course in the History of Art before her children were born but then had to wait a few years before she started on her 5 year Fine Art course at Amersham College. Since then, she had always worked with small groups of artists, mostly at Queens Park Centre in Aylesbury where they meet once a week. They started with still life but soon moved on to life drawing. They do not have a teacher but support one another. Sue works in many media including acrylic, oil, gouache and charcoal and uses local landscape as well as traveling for inspiration.

Sue has participated in Bucks Art Week three times, always with a group of friends. In 1998 they were in St Mary’s Church, Aylesbury, but in 1999 and 2001 the exhibited on home ground in Queens Park Centre. Sue is a great fan of the service to the community provided by Queens Park Centre. It is a genuinely classless environment where a broad spectrum of the public come with the intention of enjoying art. Last year’s exhibition drew 600-700 visitors. Sue currently exhibits at Art in Action, Oxford, and in the Bourton House Gallery in the Cotswolds. In December she is putting on a solo exhibition at Newark in Nottinghamshire.

This year, Sue will submit eight paintings for the Chilterns Art Exhibition. You will have the chance to see her work and that of many other local artists if you go along to Wendover Junior School on the weekend of 17th and 18th November. The exhibition is open from 10am to 4pm and refreshments are served. Ninety three local artists will display 351 paintings and they are all for sale.