A floating art gallery display

I have to agree with Suzanne. "Wow! It looks fantastic! It's picked up on the colour of the wall and now with the lighting and shadows giving it more depth, it's got a mysterious quality, just what I wanted to achieve."

We are looking at Hidden Depth, a long three-layered laser-cut stainless steel sculpture whose swirling shapes suggest pools with bubbling water and lily-shaped plants, a secret intimate underwater world. It is one of three large wall sculptures Blackthorn-based artist Suzanne O'Driscoll has made for Ventura, P&O's newest and biggest cruise liner, in Southampton waiting to depart on her maiden cruise last Friday.

Suzanne has been waiting for this moment for over four months. It was before Christmas when she last saw her sculptures before they were shipped to Italy to be installed. Now, in the Oasis pool and spa on board Ventura Suzanne could see all three hanging in the spaces they were designed for, spaces that up till then had existed only on plans and in her imagination.

It's an amazing story. Suzanne, who grew up at Streatley, has made a career from painting since studying at the Central School of Art and Design and the Slade School of Fine Art in London in the 1970s. Then, in recent years she began trying her hand at sculpture and within a short while landed this challenging commission.

Challenging enough even without the timescale.

"They first contacted me in June," she tells me. "I had to do all the research - I had no idea about metals or the technology - and design and make them, find a laser cutter skilled enough and interested in working with me, all within six months. I knew I wanted to make them in layers, to make it slightly 3D, but not a lot more to begin with." In delicious understatement she then adds, "It was quite tough.

"The difference between doing these sculptures and a painting is that with those you have them there, can watch them grow. Even if it's going off somewhere, that it's a commission, you usually have time to get to know it. You can move things, make changes. This was a more distant process. They never came back to me from the fabricator, Lee Dodd in Maidenhead before they went off to the ship. It had to be right from quite an early stage. I had to think of things like the weight very early on so the shipbuilders could reinforce the walls and the fittings long before I had even thought of them."

I asked her what, when all her experience had been in painting and drawing, prompted the switch to sheet steel sculpture.

"The idea of wanting to move into sculpture had been growing for quite a while," she replied. "But I wasn't really sure what area I wanted to work in. I'd had this wonderful three month-long mid-career fellowship that took me to Rome. I was based in Rome but they allowed me to travel, which was good because that's how I pick up my information for my paintings. I loved Rome. I felt it was a sculptor's city, whereas Florence is a painter's city. I got that wonderful feeling of materials there."

Once back she tried stone sculpture but found it too hard on her wrists. So, she put it aside and carried on with her paintings and pastels. But the passion for sculpture had clearly taken hold. "I felt terribly at home with it," she said.

Six years later that passion came again. In 2001, the Year of the Artist, Suzanne was asked to design a flower bed for a roundabout in Abingdon. They needed a sign too.

"This was the first time I used a laser-cut piece of steel. And as it was for the Vale of the White Horse I designed the sign to look like a white horse.

"This was the first time I had tried anything like this. I just knew I wanted to. And I was desperate to continue on with it. I knew where I wanted to go."

P&O Cruises has a history of linking artists with its passenger liners. Back in 1959 they commissioned a series of artworks for their liner Canberra from artists who became big names in the art world. They included David Hockney, Graham Sutherland and Barbara Hepworth. Now, for Ventura, "the largest superliner ever built for Britain" P&O boasts, they commissioned 43 upcoming British artists to produce almost 7,000 pieces of modern art for display around the public areas. P&O intends Ventura as "the UK's largest floating art gallery".

Tom Tempest-Radford, the art consultant responsible for commissioning this elite collection, explained the long process working with the ship's designers, imagining what art might work for what spaces and so on.

"Finding something for the spa and pool area was a real problem. We'd been looking for ages for something corrosion-proof, a relief, not too far off the wall, something right for a wet area," he told me.

"Then one day my secretary was updating our records and she came across Suzanne's new website. We'd known Suzanne for many years; her paintings are in most of our clients' collections. But we knew her as a painter. Now on her website were these stainless-steel sculptures. I couldn't believe it. Problem solved. And she was an artist I knew wouldn't let us down."

The sculptures are beautifully made, and have an appeal that is global and timeless. And they successfully marry features with feelings.

There's a sense of the sky and openness as well as the sea in the two circular sculptures by the outdoor pool. Each is 1.54m in diameter and in four overlaid layers, which creates a sense of movement within the artwork as you move around it. You find fish, a shoal playing, moving and circling, you find birds flying on currents of air, and interwoven shapes that could be tropical plants, water or waves.

Suzanne considers sheet steel sculptures a natural progression from her painting. They start with a similar drawing process, are built up in layers and are an amalgam of many influences, largely travels captured in sketchbooks and photos, just like the patchwork of bright colours that are her paintings.

Suzanne's studio at Ash Barn House, Lower Road, Blackthorn, near Bicester, is open daily during Art Weeks, from May 10-18. Her website is www.suzanneodriscoll.com For Artweeks visit www.artweeks.org