Australian raised artist Sue Macartney-Snape is gaining quite a healthy reputation in Britain (and around the world) for her tongue-in-cheek Caricaturist London portrayals of the upper middle classes through her astute caricatures. Her talent for observing our every peculiar trait and gait is earning her a spot amongst the best known caricaturists of our time, bolstered by a regular slot for the Telegraph, and with her limited edition prints being guzzled down like vintage wine at a dinner party.
Brimming with Jeeves-like humour, and a generous dollop of witty candour, Sue Macartney-Snape encapsulates British social stereotypes through her caricatures. Red-faced gents clutch the stems of their wine glasses, whilst the tableaus animatedly depict routines that might be at play during a dinner party; waiters rush about with the precision and litheness of an acrobat, whilst elegant ladies and suits mingle smoothly in reconnaissance of a Ferrero Roche pyramid. Other scenes accurately replicate the comical relationship between pets and their owners, who share the same rituals and habits of, say, lazing in living room, or pottering in the garden.
Comedy that is driven by social observation is one of the cleverest kinds of humour, and one that Sue Macartney-Snape has mastered. She scrutinizes our every whim, like the Lady of the Manor scrutinizes the silverware when guests come to stay.
Sue Macartney-Snape now lives and works in London, the apt perch from which to study our particular habits and pastimes – key ingredients that feed her imagination in the process of portraying us most acutely through her pen. It is the juxtaposition of her carefully chosen titles and precisely composed caricatures that creates her winning recipe for witty art.
This style of art has been popular for centuries, and is currently enjoying a surge in interest as new methods of illustration are being developed; animated films are diversifying and the graphic novel is more popular than ever. Illustrators and cartoonists are becoming recognised through their regular newspaper appearances, and through published contemporary works, such as Andy Riley’s Bunny Suicides series. Sue Macartney-Snape’s uncanny talent for picking out the idiosyncrasies that characterise our society isn’t dissimilar from how mums can spot a crumb on a work surface at ten paces, highlight your own obliviousness to it, make you laugh, and then make you notice every crumb you ever see thereafter.
Leave a Reply