Description

Spare Ribs Suzie is a humorous and quietly poignant Northern narrative painting inspired by Newcastle’s Chinatown and the comforting rituals that shape ordinary life.

Painted from memories of student days in Newcastle during the 1980s and 1990s, the artwork is set outside the much-loved China Town Express takeaway — the scene of countless late-night suppers, routines and familiar comforts. Suzie makes her regular Saturday pilgrimage for spare ribs, embracing the same dependable ritual weekly.

Part of Sue Dewhurst’s acclaimed Owd Lasses series, the painting also nods to the ground breaking feminist magazine Spare Rib, weaving subtle social history into an apparently everyday moment. Like many of the artist’s female characters, Suzie carries a rich inner life beneath the humour: fiercely intelligent, unconventional and entirely comfortable in her own steadfast routines.

Rendered in luminous evening colours and expressive brushwork, the painting blends nostalgia, wit and urban storytelling into a striking contemporary British artwork. It celebrates the rhythm of ordinary habits, Northern city life and the small routines that quietly anchor us through decades of change.

Ideal for collectors of Northern art, Newcastle paintings, narrative figurative art and contemporary British storytelling artwork.

Sue Dewhurst is a contemporary British artist based in West Wales whose work explores humour, memory and working-class identity through narrative painting. Influenced by years living in Newcastle, Yorkshire and Wales, her paintings often celebrate overlooked lives, social history and the emotional resonance of everyday rituals.