At 85, Sue Kreitzman Lives Inside Her Own Colourful Art Installation

The 85-year-old, originally from New York and now based in Mile End, London, says she “flunked” every art class she took, from elementary school through high school. She spent decades working as a teacher, cookbook author, and TV chef

While proofing her latest cookbook, she picked up a marker and drew a mermaid.I looked at the mermaid and the mermaid looked at me and I gave her a fish for a hat,” Kreitzman recalls. “She was in charge, not me. The mermaid took over my life. I never wrote another cookbook. I got obsessed with drawing.”

Every wall, table, corridor and shelf is filled with pictures, sculptures, dolls’ heads, and found objects. Colour is everywhere — on the walls, in her clothes, in the pink of her hair and the red of her glasses. She often wears bright kimonos and rarely goes anywhere without one of her signature “neck shrines” — chunky, personalised sculptures she wears around her neck.

She has made hundreds, possibly more than a thousand. I joined her in the back garden workshop to make one. She handed me a Masai beaded collar sourced ethically from a Kenyan designer and told me, “It has to mean something to you.”

I brought objects that mattered to me: two necklaces from past interviewees, a papier-mâché heart made by my daughter, and two tiny microphones to represent my work as a broadcaster.

Inside the workshop, drawers are labelled “teeth” and “eyeballs.” The teeth are real. The eyeballs are not.
“I’m an artist, not a serial killer,” Kreitzman said, laughing.

When my neck shrine was finished, she called it “exquisite” and set it aside to dry. Salt beef bagels from Brick Lane arrived soon after.

Safe space and community

Kreitzman doesn’t keep the house to herself. Her curator, Jaime Freestone, often stays over and helps organise displays — like the table of Egyptian busts and doll heads that Kreitzman says “each have a soul.”

Freestone first emailed Kreitzman for mentorship and ended up becoming one of her closest friends.

When I first came here, I used to find it a bit overwhelming,” Freestone said. “Now it’s like a second home to me. It’s one of those safe spaces for people who are LGBT, people who are looking to be mentored. Sue offers that safe space for us.”

That community regularly gathers at the house. Artist Elizabeth Joseph, known for miniature furniture and crochet wear, met Kreitzman at a Spitalfields market while they were both hunting for treasure.
“She saw my bracelets and she just came at me,” Joseph laughed. Kreitzman’s reply: “I loved her from first sight.”

French artist Anne-Sophie Cochevelou, one of Kreitzman’s mentees, arrived wearing a quilted Anne Boleyn-style dress, a beaded face mask, and gold platform shoes

Sometimes if I’m feeling a bit low, a little bit uninspired, I come here,” Cochevelou said. “I get all the creative energy and when I leave, I feel all pumped up and refreshed and ready to make art.”

Outside is the “Museum Shed,” with a sign over the door reading “drama queen.” Inside sits what Kreitzman calls her “throne,” surrounded by bejewelled old-fashioned telephones she calls “goddess phones

You can call a goddess on one of these phones when you really need help,” she explained. “They connect you to something mystical, and you never know exactly who’s going to answer. I love that idea

Kreitzman describes herself as “obsessive, bonkers and extremely colourful.” She has had no formal training and says she just “makes it up as I go along.

That didn’t stop her. When she moved into her first rental apartment, she painted the walls the colours she wanted. She invited her mother for lunch.
“My mother’s eyes looked this way and that way and she said, ‘huh – you’ll grow out of it’Kreitzman grins: “Well Ma, guess what? I’m 85, and I still haven’t grown out of it.”

She doesn’t sell her work. She prefers to swap pieces with friends, and her home is full of gifts as well as her own creations.
But I don’t just throw it together, it all has meaning,” she said. “It makes me feel safe.”

For Kreitzman, beige isn’t just dull — she jokes that wearing it might be fatal. In its place is a life built entirely on colour, curiosity, and connection.

At 85, she isn’t winding down. She’s still drawing, still mentoring, and still inviting people into a house where every object tells a story.