“California”

When we first experienced the pandemic, I decided that I needed to create a body of work to have something to show for the time spent in isolation. I drew and painted my way through the anxiety and unexpected joys. After two years of this concentrated work, I had changed. I was a different artist. In the autumn of 2022, I stepped away from my teaching position and commissioned illustration work to focus only on my painting. This new work exists in a space in between contemporary painting and illustration. My years as an illustrator certainly have had an influence on my visual language, but the sense of wonder I try to capture in my painting is essentially, who I am.

These paintings are pure self-expression. I find myself returning to themes of nature and the urgency of our relationship with it. I incorporate thoughts about the rapid pace in which the world is changing and a lessening of a sensual world. I have been influenced by the Chicago Imagists who came a generation before me but who's work was very much part of my early creative awareness. Pop culture, comics and other mid-century graphic imagery has all played a part in my own unique visual language. I begin most paintings intuitively, pencil to paper, with no preparatory sketch, leaving behind evidence of my process on the surface. I work in watercolor for it's immediacy and frequent surprises. It's never entirely in my control.

“Yet Unnamed”

“Summer Din”

“Moth Boy & Fossil Beds”

http://www.susanestellekwas.com/

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