Sue was born and brought up in South Africa and moved to the United Kingdom in 1986. She has made her home in Cornwall for the past twenty years.

Her love of painting existed from her earliest school art classes. However, her talent really blossomed when she undertook a botanical painting course in the UK, with the famous Anne-Marie Evans. Evans disciplined teaching, over a number of years, continued to inspire Sue with her botanical studies. She discovered a latent talent for the painstaking detail and minute water-colour techniques required, eventually becoming an accomplished botanical artist.

However, seeking to express herself on a larger canvas and motivated by surrounding seascapes, both in Cornwall and in South Africa, she started experimenting with acrylic paints. Both countries are a haven for artists, with the light particularly favourable and exciting in the parts where Sue has homes. Her gardens https://www.bonythonmanor.co.uk/ on the Lizard peninsula in Southern Cornwall, have achieved national renown and are open to the public for the spring and summer months when they are full of colour. Every plant and shrub has been planned and planted by Sue over the twenty acres of gardens, using a colour palette that owes much to her South African origins and gives a unique perspective on garden layout uncommon in English design.

Capturing these landscapes, seascapes and the colours of the gardens became a challenge - partly in order to furnish and decorate the holiday cottages on the Bonython Estate in Cornwall - but also for the three family hotels in South Africa [The Cellars-Hohenort in Cape Town; The Marine in Hermanus; The Plettenberg in Plettenberg Bay; all five-star boutique hotels owned jointly].
Using colour and light is the artist’s prerogative - and many choose to paint out of doors [en plein air] and generate considerable inspiration from so doing. However, Sue carries the colours in her mind and has an unerring eye for juxtaposition, making each work a pleasing and decorative addition to its eventual home.