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Born in 1950 in Newton, MA, United States 1982, M.F.A., State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo, NY School of the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA Highline Community College, WA University of Montana, Missoula, MT Portland State University, Portland, OR Rocky Mountain School of Photography, MT |
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"I have always responded to both urban and non-urban environments visually. I grew up alternating between the wilderness of Alaska and a place just outside Boston, Massachusetts. Place is pretty much the subject of my painting--not naming specific locations, but addressing the fact that place is illusive and relative.
I used to teach in Lincoln Center's and Cooper Union's Aesthetics in Education program, and while researching landscape traditions, I viewed some Chinese tapestries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was intrigued by the use of many horizons in one work of art. It made more sense to me because when we view a place, we take it to memory and expectation. The view is layered, almost perceptually. In these paintings, I am working with various approaches to multiple perspectives. Another influence on my work and process has been photography. I started developing and printing several years ago. I saw the contact sheets as evidence of movement. Mine, specifically. I was moving a lot between the city and the countryside, mostly by train. I took pictures all the time. Seeing all the places I had been to wedged together in a strip was very exciting. It suggested just another kind of layering of time and space, and place! So I developed the Verge works, which contain several places in one or two panels. I started working in diptych and triptych form because I was viewing the world(s) so much from trains, windows, car windshields, etc. Nature and Architecture come together for me in the Beam works. I am addressing the actions of architecture--as if they are gestures in motion--thrusting, bending, reaching, and bridging because that's how I was seeing them in my environment. It was like a dance in a massive scale, outdoors, walking under the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, for example. But sky, climate, weather, and movement shape what we see in architecture. So the subject of this work is also the dynamic actions (thrusting, bending, and bridging) of surrounding sky."
"My new work focuses on the sea, the coast, the water ... primarily. I knew once I moved here the ocean was going to capture my attention and it has. I've continued using photographic imagery in combination with oil paint for the same reasons I have been all along - because they combine the very personal (painted imagery) with a medium that is more universal and media oriented. In this new work I have used repetition in order to push the character of printed matter. I think repeating images is rhythmical in artwork, and it just made sense for the Sea as subject and because of my repeated visits to the same beach. It made me wonder whose tide is this - mine, the rocks', or the water's... We all seemed to be arriving and departing, and once again elements of nature become symbolic. I've taken a couple of boat rides out to sea and created the Ocean paintings from that experience. It doesn't surprise me the way people are so enthralled as they stand against the rails, looking out. I am just one of many who cannot look away.
In the Ocean series I attempted to capture some of that incredible oceanic spectacle. I've given some reflection to what I see along the coasts here, (which includes the rivers) and nature in general, and wondered why some places fascinate me more than others. I came to think of places as stages where elements of nature, the light, the color, the rocks, the remains of a pier, are all characters
in a dramatic scene, and I am just one of many passing members of a viewing audience. Thinking theatrically as a visual artist working with landscape influences everything from composition to color
choice and texture. You could say that we could read any landscape painting as a "stage with characters."
In this recent work the notion of theater and a cast of actors began with the looking ... before the photograph, before the idea of the painting. Needless to say this process has given me roots in my new home here in Maine."
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Selection of works from Susan Barnes |
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