About
Dr Susy Paisley is a conservation biologist and the artist/designer behind Newton Paisley. Her designs are all about engaging with wild nature and endangered species.
Core to Susy’s work is the idea that to conserve nature we must fall love with it, and that, because human beings are such visual creatures, art and design have an important role to play in this. It gets her goat (the endangered markhor goat, to be specific) that flora and fauna are ubiquitous in print and pattern, but often they are stylised in a way that is strangely disconnected from real species and the careful cherishing of the natural world. In order to explore and challenge this disconnect, Susy began with research, based at the University of Kent, though she soon felt inspired to put the theories into practise.
In 2016, Susy founded Newton Paisley – hand-illustrating wild nature-themed designs for textiles and wall-coverings. The super eco-conscious business has thrived, winning international awards and fascinating bespoke commissions. Importantly, by working with the World Land Trust, 100m2 of critical habitat is preserved for each metre of fabric, and roll of wallpaper, sold.
Though Susy has no formal artistic training, with a name like Paisley, a passion for textiles was in the blood. After her Biology degree in North Carolina, further studies and travels took Susy through textile hotspots of Mexico and the Andes. In the Bolivian cloud forest she studied the spectacled bear, the basis of her doctorate from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology. The practise of sketching flora and fauna during fieldwork led to illustrating commissions from colleagues and scientific journals.
Susy has worked bringing art and biology together in collaboration with artists like London Fieldworks and Turner Prize-winner Chris Ofili. In terms of inspiration, she sites scientist/ artists like Ernst Haeckel, and Maria Sybilla Merian, and textile designers like Josef Frank and William Morris and the rich decorative traditions of folk art and craft which so often draw inspiration from nature.
Susy is proud to be a Linnean Society Fellow and is delighted to be based there for London Craft Week.
