Susanna April – The Designer Project

It’s been amazing sharing all of the wonderful designs by textile designer Susanna April with you! We hope you’ve loved them just as much as we have. To coincide with Susanna’s ‘My Hearts Garden’ collection being made available to all of our customers through our Fabric Shop online, the artist herself has put together a guest blog which further explains her self-taught design process, what inspires her designs as well as bit more about herself. 

Keep reading to find out more! 

Susanna April

Hi fabric lovers! I’m Susanna, an intuitive acrylic artist and designer from QLD, and I’m so excited to be a part of The Designer Project!

Susanna in her Studio

I’ve been painting and dabbling in art for years, but recently have come alive with discovering surface design – as a graphic designer by trade it’s been a dream come true to marry my two loves of paint and digital together!

My process is quite fluid and simple, and really just comes down to loving paint and loving the feeling of making beauty with my hands. My art practice is very connected to my spiritual journey and I call it ‘a creative journey of surrendering all’ – you will see this in the titles of my prints! Art has always been healing for me and I’m passionate about seeing it set others free from fear and awaken joy in people hearts.

I start by layering many sheets of paper with acrylics to get in the ‘flow’ – usually at 10pm at night because I have two tiny and beautiful but also very needy kiddos. After I get in the groove I’ll work on a canvas piece or two, layering the colours intuitively – there’s not really a method to my creativity – sometimes it works, and often it does not! But the longer I persevere the more wonderful and delightful discoveries I make.

I like to think of my style as a ‘colourful minimalist’, there’s nothing better than seeing a certain colour shine on a background of white! I choose my palettes to sing together and don’t often use contrasting colours.
After I’m happy with an artwork I will either scan via my art scanner or take a high res photograph, and then create a seamless repeat in photoshop. I love how abstract art looks when it’s large scale – especially on textiles and clothing – almost like wearing a piece of art!

You can follow me along for the journey over @susannaapril, I share my heart and creative process quite openly. I would love to see the creations you make from my prints!

Thanks for reading, happy sewing!
Susanna x

If you want to collaborate with us on The Designer Project and become part of this creative club, please apply! Send us an email with your portfolio and why you would like to be part of this initiative, and we will be in touch!