NYAB Event - Susan English Exhibition

Susan English Exhibition

Littlejohn Contemporary

This event has ended.

Littlejohn Contemporary presents “New Work”, an exhibition of paintings by Susan English.

Susan English’s most recent works are painted panels of color assembled into wide horizontal sequences. The surface is created by pouring multiple layers of tinted polymer, often upwards of 10-15 layers, giving the works a deep luminosity and visceral presence. In her working process she positions and repositions the panels, continuing to pour and cut before arriving at a final order. The work is complete when a very particular relationship has been arrived at - one that creates a narrative of color, space and light. The surfaces range from dull to glossy - either absorbing or reflecting the light, responding always to the light in the room, so that although the relationships between the colors and panels are specific, they are also fluid. Carter Ratcliff, in his 2014 essay on English’s work, wrote about the painting Blue, “With these tonal shifts as her theme, English plays a series of variations that evoke a particularly complex and engaging episode in the life of the color blue.”

English refers to these works as Vertical Landscapes. The duality implied in the title refers to the horizontal orientation, which references landscape, and the fact that this horizontal strip is made with multiple vertical sections. The work can be taken in as a whole yet the divisions also create a progression that can, in a sense, be read. Ultimately, the viewer enters the work at any point of the progression thus conflating the idea of a beginning, middle and end. English is interested in how ends can be abrupt or fade; how beginnings can be startling or slow; and, perhaps most particularly, in the vastness of the middle.
Also on view will be large-scale works on paper. English’s ideas from the poured works translated into watercolor have resulted in vast transparent spaces structured by vertical bleeding lines. She makes these linear marks with a single direct stroke loading the brush with pigment and then continuing to layer color into these marks. The result is a kind of visceral saturation: a physical presence not ordinarily seen in this medium.

Susan English received an MFA in painting at Hunter College. She currently lives and works in the Hudson Valley. This is the artist’s first exhibition at Littlejohn Contemporary.